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There is no way to adequately express my appreciation to you all for being here this evening. Colleagues, friends, family, and treasured alumni have traveled from all over the world! For me, it has always been about the music and the people, and the effort that many of you have made to be here is overwhelming. 

Thank you for inspiring me, challenging me to be better, and enriching my life with your trust, talent, intelligence, vulnerability, and humor. I celebrate YOU: your lives, families, the people you impact, the music you make, your careers, career changes, and the lives you have built and will continue to build after your time at Northwestern. 

I have vivid, meaningful, joyful, and in many cases, hilarious memories of our experiences together in Advanced Conducting (big beats big), NUMB (HAIL!), Seminar (the family), and as members of our SWE (the musical love of my life). I look forward to the future with my husband Jay Kennedy (the other love of my life) and will always enjoy seeing you and hearing all about your adventures. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

We remember Tara Davis, Harris “Teddy” Malasky, and Rachel Serber.

Mallory Thompson, conductor

Flute
Claire Kim
Minseo Kim
Saeyeong Kim
Emma Krause
Miguel Rodriguez

Oboe
Stina Hawkinson
Orly Lindner
Audrey Marx
Timothy Zhang

Bassoon
Micah Cortezzo
Justice Gardner
Colin Kurtz

Clarinet
Jason Chen
Anjali Covill
Kathryn Jarvey 
Andrew Kang
Henry Lazarro
Nathan Kock
Connor Myers
Ashrey Shah
Caroline Weiss

Saxophone
Isaac Boone
Philip Kleutgens
Yun Qu Tan
Natalia Warthen

Trumpet
Troy Archer
Sarah Heimberg
Zach Hommel
William Lewis
Ari Rios
Fiona Shonik

Horn
Colin Akers
Gwen Boros
Emmett Conway
Yui Ginther
Alessandra Liebmann
Lily Kern
Mark Morris
Miranda Smith

Trombone
Stewart Bridgeforth
Noah Eder
Kurt Eide
Alex Ertl
Tim George
Andrew Ng
Griffin Rupp
Angel Salinas
Neal Williamson

Euphonium
Chris Carrigg
Oliver Stark

Tuba
Evan DeRicco
Alec Rich

Percussion
Ryan Lee
Cameron Marquez
Claire McLean
Blake Parker
Stephen Symank

String Bass
Broner McCoy

Piano/Organ
Dong-Wan Ha 
Marianne Parker

Harp
Raquel Coleman

Despite great controversy over his discriminatory ideologies and behaviors, Richard Wagner created a body of work that represents the zenith of both nineteenth-century opera and the harmonic vocabulary of the Romantic period. Born in Leipzig, he studied in Dresden and toiled in relative obscurity until his opera Rienzi premiered in 1842. A series of triumphs followed over the next decade, including Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin. Most of Wagner’s operas deal with legendary characters and supernatural struggles between good and evil; later in his career he used the terms “music drama” and “festival play” to describe his works that he believed surpassed the traditional conception of a romantic opera. 

First performed in Munich on June 21, 1868, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is one of the most popular and longest operas in the repertory, lasting approximately five hours. The story of Die Meistersinger takes place in Nuremberg during the middle of the 16th century and revolves around the real-life guild of Meistersingers, an association of amateur poets and musicians. The Meistersingers developed a craftsman-like approach to music-making, with an intricate system of rules for composing and performing songs. The opera draws much of its charm from its faithful depiction of the traditions of the Meistersinger guild. One of the main characters, the cobbler-poet Hans Sachs, is based on an actual historical figure: Hans Sachs (1494–1576), the most famous of the historical Meistersingers. 

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg occupies a unique place in Wagner’s output. In addition to being the only comedy among his mature operas, it is also the only opera centered on a historically well-defined time and place rather than a mythical or legendary setting. It is the only mature Wagner opera based entirely on an original story, which was devised by Wagner himself. Interestingly, the work incorporates many of the operatic conventions that Wagner had rallied against in his essays on the theory of opera, including rhymed verse, arias, choruses, a ballet, and even a quintet. 

The Act III Suite from the opera—consisting of the Prelude to Act III, the “Dance of the Apprentices,” and the Act III Finale—has become a part of the standard orchestral repertory. Mallory Thompson completed this transcription for wind ensemble in 1985 during her doctoral studies at the Eastman School of Music. The work is dedicated to Donald Hunsberger and the Eastman Wind Ensemble.

Benjamin Horne is a conductor, composer, arranger, and low brass performer whose works span various styles. Horne has worked with and had music performed by musicians from the Chicago Symphony, Dallas Symphony, San Antonio Symphony (now reorganized as Philharmonic), Atlanta Symphony, Chicago Lyric Opera, Houston Opera, and the President’s Own US Marine Band, as well as many renowned instrumental soloists. 

He is currently a Doctoral Wind Conducting and Master of Music Composition student at Michigan State University. He previously attended the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University (GA).

Horne describes this work:

"Deep River is a musical portrait paying homage to the history and heritage of the spiritual. The work opens with imagery of the river with woodwind trills and piano rolls (the piano rolls in particular are quoted from Henry T. Burleigh’s art song arrangement of 1917). Over this texture are various testimonial solos featuring several members of the wind ensemble. The first and only proper presentation of the song begins with a tuba solo. The bass voice introduction serves as a tribute to Paul Robeson, a renaissance man whose accomplished singing career frequently featured the spiritual in his performances and recordings throughout the 20th century. The second presentation of the song leans on the more religious aspects of the spiritual opening with a saxophone section soli meant to imitate the stylings of organ playing in a Black American church. The full ensemble then enters as if a choir is joining in to share the moment before fully taking over for the climax. The work then returns to the texture of the introduction, the river flowing with new testimonies of the 'promised land.'

'Deep river, my home is over Jordan.

Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground

Oh, don’t you want to go to that Gospel feast?

That Promised Land, where all is peace?'"

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685 in Eisenach, Germany, where he received his initial musical training from his father. During his early adulthood, he studied the organ and earned a succession of church organist posts in eastern Germany, including at Arnstadt and Weimar. In 1723, Bach became the choirmaster at both St. Nicholas and St. Thomas Churches in Leipzig, where he would spend the remainder of his life. A highly prolific composer with over 1,000 works to his credit, Bach is well known for his organ compositions, the development of the fugue, and his role as the father of tonal harmony.

Unlike Bach’s vocal, chamber, and orchestral works, his keyboard compositions date from throughout his career. The Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is one of his most recognizable works. According to the BWV catalog, Bach composed only four pieces entitled Toccata and Fugue. These masterpieces derive their name from the Italian term toccare, “to touch,” used to designate technical or finger-oriented works. According to Donald Hunsberger: 

"The Toccata and Fugue in D Minor contains virtuosic writing combined with a recitative style. Within the Toccata itself there resides a freedom of tempo and technical display that is in great contrast to the formality of the various fugal statements and answers. The third part of the Toccata serves as a coda-like statement containing a recitative and various changes of texture and tempo, finally arriving at a Molto Adagio that closes the section to create a grand A-B-A form for the work. 

"The fugue draws its theme from the downward motion of the opening Toccata melodic line. It proceeds through numerous development sections until finally arriving back at the free toccata-fantasia style."

In scoring the work for winds, Hunsberger has chosen an instrumentation that uses the ensemble’s complete range. This brilliant orchestration fully explores the technical potential of the wind ensemble while effectively imitating the timbre and registration of the organ. 

The Northwestern University Symphonic Wind Ensemble recorded Toccata and Fugue in D Minor on their CD, Winds of Nagual, in 2002. It is available on Spotify and Apple Music. 

Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, David Maslanka earned a bachelor of music education degree from Oberlin College and graduate degrees in composition from Michigan State University, where he studied with H. Owen Reed. He served on the faculties of the State University of New York at Geneseo, Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, and City University of New York at Kingsborough. Maslanka has written for a wide variety of chamber, orchestral, and choral ensembles, but his works for winds and percussion have become especially well known, including A Child’s Garden of Dreams, which was commissioned by John and Marietta Paynter for the Northwestern Symphonic Wind Ensemble.

Symphony No. 4 was commissioned by a consortium of bands including the University of Texas at Austin, Stephen F. Austin State University, and Michigan State University. Inspired largely by the life and death of Abraham Lincoln and “the unshakable idea of the unity of the human race,” the work explores dialectic tension—alternately spiritual and irreverent, concordant and chaotic—reflecting the “tremendous struggle of opposites raging in the country” during the Civil War. Diverse musical material ranges from quotations of Bach chorales and the “Old Hundredth” (the hymn, still popular today, played as Lincoln’s coffin traveled from Washington, D.C., to its resting place in Springfield, Illinois) to worldly jazz riffs and otherworldly clarinet effects representing the innocent cries of the “blessed boys” from Goethe’s Faust. Maslanka provides the following notes: 

"The roots of Symphony No. 4 are many. The central driving force is the spontaneous rise of the impulse to shout for the joy of life. I feel it is the powerful voice of the earth that comes to me from my adopted western Montana and the high plains and mountains of central Idaho. My personal experience of this voice is one of being helpless and torn open by the power of the thing that wants to be expressed—the welling-up shout that cannot be denied. I am set aquiver and am forced to shout and sing. The response in the voice of the earth is the answering shout of thanksgiving, and the shout of praise…

"…I have used Christian Symbols because they are my cultural heritage, but I have tried to move through them to a depth of universal humanness, to an awareness that is not defined by religious labels. My impulse through this music is to speak to the fundamental human issues of transformation and rebirth in this chaotic time." 

The Northwestern University Symphonic Wind Ensemble recorded Symphony No. 4 on their CD, Rising, in 2011. It is available on Spotify and Apple Music.