Millennium Canons: Looking Forward, Looking Back, and: Millennium Canons, and: My Hands Are a City, and: Lost Gulch Lookout, and: Kingfishers Catch Fire, and: Hammersmith, and: Awayday (review)

Much excitement and great expectations preceded the release of Millennium Canons, the first recording by the University of Georgia Wind Ensemble under its new conductor John P. Lynch, director of bands and professor of music at the University of Georgia. The disc opens with Millennium Canons by Kevin Puts, a work that blends neobaroque contrapuntal techniques with extended tertian harmonies popular with both British and American composers of contemporary wind-band music. The University of Georgia Wind Ensemble performs the work, which lends the compact disc its title, with tremendous energy that presses the listener aggressively forward as the ensemble moves seamlessly from brilliant brass fanfares to gentle ensemble chorales. Notable moments include an elegant saxophone duet and a later virtuosic upper woodwind obligati.

The recording continues with a substantial work by Jonathan Newman. Many wind-band conductors and performers first discovered this eclectic composer on the 2004 recording 3 Steps Forward (Klavier Records K 11146), which featured his rhythmically complex Okay, Feel Good, masterfully performed by the University of Las Vegas Wind Ensemble. Newman has continued to foster an ever-growing group of unabashed fans of his music. A reworking of the earlier composition The Rivers of Bowery, in My Hands Are a City, Newman greatly expands the material used in the former piece and incorporates an amazing number of instruments into his compositional palette. The use of electronic instruments remains especially notable. Vintage analog synthesizer sounds and inventive instructions for the percussion section (e.g., bowed vibraphone) lend a layer of contrast that profoundly enhances the expressive range of the every so often homogenous wind ensemble sound. The performance appears nearly flawless, even with metric complexity, extreme ranges, and cacophony present in the work.

Lynch and the University of Georgia Wind Ensemble commissioned Kristin Kuster's Lost Gulch Lookout. This marks the first recording of an intriguing programmatic work, which endeavors to "reflect the craggy and colorful landscape of Kuster's Colorado birthplace" (3). Within the first two minutes of the work, a well-executed English horn solo appears, providing a simple hemiola against the repetitive ostinati played by the upper woodwinds. Performing even brief stark moments remains challenging for wind players, and the flutes and clarinets meet the challenge admirably. The percussion soli, reminiscent of the final moments of David Gillingham's Concertino for Four Percussion and Wind Orchestra, contains striking, harsh low brass accents from the entire brass section and angular melodic fragments that create a supercharged musical landscape. As in all of the works on this recording, the trumpet section stands out among the ensemble, perhaps owing to the players' applied music instruction with Fred Mills, the university's professor of trumpet and longtime member of the Canadian Brass. Mills passed away suddenly in 2009 after this recording was made.

Of the selections on this recording, the two-movement Kingfishers Catch Fire by Juilliard graduate John Mackey may be the least satisfying—not to say that no great music-making occurs in the work, only that the first movement seems to require an exceedingly long time to develop. In stark contrast, the second movement erupts with rhythmic energy and drive, with fantastic trumpet playing again providing some truly electric moments. The obvious reference to Stravinsky's Firebird in the final measures of the piece provides some self-effacing humor and a daringly dramatic conclusion.

Rounding out the collection, the recording includes two well-known works from the wind-band repertoire: Hammersmith: Prelude and Scherzo, the towering masterpiece for wind band by Gustav Holst and Welshman Adam Gorb's immensely popular Awayday. Lynch's interpretation of Hammersmith remains understated and informed by his adherence to both the score and to the decidedly unromantic ethos of the piece...