Episode 8: Reflections

This episode is about Reflections (2019) for grade 2.5 concert band, which was commissioned by the Minnesota Junior Winds.

Episode links:
-Learn more about the Minnesota Junior Winds
-Peruse/purchase Reflections

Audio credits for this episode:
-Arizona State University and conductor Malcolm Jones

Please visit caitnishimura.com for perusal scores, recordings, program notes, and more info about me and my work. Connect with me on social media: @composercait

If you have a question, submit it here and it may be answered during a future episode.

Thank you for listening!

Transcript

00:00
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Composer Cait podcast. My name is Cait and today we're looking at a piece called Reflections. Reflections is for a grade 2.5 concert band. It's about 4 and a half minutes long. It was commissioned and premiered by the Minnesota Junior Winds Concert Band in April 2019. This is what it says in the About Us description on this organization's website.

00:30
Minnesota Junior Winds provides an opportunity for talented young band musicians to regularly play and work in an ensemble with similarly motivated and enthusiastic peers. Essentially, it's like being in an honour band every week. Each year, students in Minnesota Junior Winds ensembles play music they might otherwise not play in their home schools and work with well-known musicians and conductors. Students have performed newly commissioned works,

00:57
performed joint concerts with colleges and community ensembles, worked with instrument-specific coaches, and built friendships with young musicians from other schools. The fine student musicians are representative of the high-quality music programs throughout Minnesota. So when I worked with this organization, there were two bands, the Symphonic Wind Ensemble, conducted by Charles Weise, and the Concert Band conducted by Geneva Fitzsimons. The Concert Band is the ensemble that premiered Reflections.

01:27
I saw on their website that this year they also have a third ensemble, the Preparatory Band, for students in their first few years of playing their instruments. So evidently this community is growing and I think that's amazing. They also have a history of commissioning new music from living composers and participating in a lot of consortium projects. On their website, they have a running list of all the works they've commissioned, every consortium they've participated in.

01:55
past concert programs, upcoming concert info, etc. So I'll leave a link to their page in the episode notes in case anyone wants to learn more. If you're a band director, this would also probably be a good resource for repertoire that might be suitable for your ensembles if you have bands playing around this level. And if you happen to be in Minnesota, definitely check this out and tell your students about it because maybe they could participate in one of these three bands.

02:21
Okay, so let me tell you a bit about the context in which I wrote this piece. I've mentioned in previous episodes that in the fall of 2018, I went on this big composer tour where I visited schools and worked with bands, I attended concerts and performances of my music, I gave guest lectures, and I traveled throughout two states and two provinces. This was also the timeframe that I had to work on this commission, which was due at the start of

02:50
February 2019, leaving me only a month to finish up once I got back from the tour at the end of December. So any downtime that I had between workshops or while I was traveling, I was working on this piece. It's really cool to think back to this time because I essentially came up with this entire piece on the road. I used pianos in school band rooms and student practice rooms while I was visiting different places. And all of the melodies and concepts were created while I was on tour.

03:19
working with ensembles on my existing music. Even the title came from this experience because I was in such a reflective mindset while getting the opportunity to hear so much of my music played by all these different people in so many different places, traveling to different places I'd never been to before. And all of this was within my first year of going full-time as a composer. So it was a really big deal to me and I was feeling very grateful.

03:45
optimistic, energized, and just very motivated to keep going. And I think all of this came through somehow in this piece that I wrote. I remember working on this in a practice room at one of the schools I was visiting, and I caught some students peeking through the narrow little practice room window to see what I was doing. So I opened the door and invited them in and told them what I was working on. I offered to play them some excerpts of what I had composed so far. And I even got their feedback on a few things.

04:13
It was really fun to share some of this process with young musicians, and looking back, it was probably pretty cool for them to witness that. I know I would have loved that kind of experience when I was a student. One of the things the commissioner requested for this piece was to create a few moments that featured the trombone and tenor sax sections. These were sections within the band at the time that were particularly strong. And since these instruments are not typically featured melodically within pieces at this level,

04:42
or not as often anyway. It was important to find a way to incorporate this in a way that would still be approachable for other bands in the future that didn't necessarily have these strengths in their ensemble. So throughout the piece, I assigned melodic material and moving notes and interesting things to the inner voices within the band, still providing lots of support from elsewhere and featuring other sections as well. But I really enjoyed working with this specific focus and I'm happy with how it turned out.

05:11
You can hear right from the beginning of the piece that the rising melody begins with the tenor sax, trombone, euphonium, and marimba.

06:01
throughout this piece, I took my musical ideas and played around with the concept of reflections. So this opening ascending line that we just heard, that's measure 1 to 4 and 11 to 14, it's in B flat major and in 3-4 time. But this same material comes back at measure 57, this time in C major and in 6-8 time, so the rhythmic pattern is a little different. So let's listen to that now.

06:48
one of these musical reflections is the melody that happens at letter A, again starting in B flat major and in 3-4 time.

07:40
and this one comes back again at letter D, but in the new key of C major and slightly modified rhythms since we're now in 6-8.

08:25
There is a nice little chorale section that uses fermatas and some colourful chords with the tiniest bit of tension. The first time it happens is at letter B, and it sounds like this.

09:20
The second time it happens is right towards the end of the piece at letter F, and the second time it sounds like this.

10:36
And just for fun, here's a clip of me working on this part on a slightly out of tune piano. Personally, I really like revisiting how my ideas transformed from the piano to the full concert band, and I hope you enjoy hearing it too.

11:38
Flipping between two time signatures, 3-4 and 6-8, is a learning opportunity for musicians at this level who may not be as comfortable with these changes. It's a great chance to teach subdivision and how these time signatures actually contain the same number of beats, but the groupings and emphasis make them feel very different.

12:00
The key change from the familiar comfortable key signature of Bb major to what might be a new or less comfortable key C major is another challenge and learning opportunity within this piece. Learning to get comfortable in a different key, but with musical material that is similar to what has already happened earlier in this piece, was a method of introducing something new within a container that wasn't so scary.

12:26
These are factors that make this piece a grade 2.5 as opposed to a 2. Just a few little added challenges throughout, but I think I set everything up in a way that is accessible and interesting and hopefully enjoyable to work on. Although these musical reflections are enough justification for the title, I also want to bring in the nature inspiration side of things since that's always at the foundation of what I do. Since I was traveling while writing this piece, I was...

12:54
Seeing a lot of really beautiful landscapes and surrounded by gorgeous views in the Pacific Northwest, I spent a lot of time near water, which was a really lovely aspect of this tour, and I definitely think this impacted the music that I created during that time. Imagine looking out at a view of a beautiful mountain scene or a sunset or a tree line, and then seeing that image reflected in the water.

13:19
The colours and contours are there, but depending on the stillness or movement in the water, there might be some distortion or rippling of the image. Sometimes when we're lucky, we get to see an almost mirror-like reflection of something in perfectly still water, but most of the time the reflection is altered in some way. So this is something that I was thinking about when working on the piece reflections, and it's something that I notice whenever I'm spending time near water. Hopefully this gives you some more insight into what inspired the piece.

13:49
The world premiere of Reflections was in April 2019 on a concert featuring both of the Minnesota Junior Winds bands. I love concerts that include multiple bands, sometimes they get to watch each other's performances, and it's just a really nice vibe to have more people out supporting one another.

14:11
On my website currently there are two recordings of this piece. One is audio only and it's from a recording project at Arizona State University conducted by Malcolm Jones. There's also a video recording from a performance by the Hopkins Westwind Concert Band, which is a community band in Minnesota that participated in a small consortium for this piece.

14:34
This project was partially funded by a consortium of local Minnesota schools and community ensembles, who all got a sort of mini-commission experience with this piece. After the world premiere by the Minnesota Junior Winds Concert Band, these other ensembles got their turn working on the piece and

14:52
They got to pay a participation fee that made it much more accessible than funding an entire commission on their own. I really love collaborative efforts like this to bring new music into the world. It involves more people, usually leads to more performances of the piece right away, and it just makes it more feasible financially for everyone involved.

15:11
The list of consortium participants is on my website, which is linked in the show notes, and it's also printed within the score for every copy of this piece. So I just want to say a big thank you to these communities for helping to make this project so successful. Alright, that's it for this episode on reflections. This is a bit of a shorter episode than some of my previous ones. I think there are pros and cons to both shorter and longer episodes.

15:39
If you have any feedback for me on this aspect of this podcast, feel free to reach out and let me know what you think. If you're interested in taking a look at the score for Reflections or purchasing a copy for your own library, please visit caitnishimura.com where you can access all of my concert music and learn more about me and my work. If you've enjoyed the Composer Cait podcast, please spread the word in your community and help me grow my audience. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you in the next one.