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This summer I had the great pleasure of visiting the peaceful, beautiful, and musical Nordic country of Finland! As a former conducting student at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, I was thrilled to catch up with friends and build new memories in the “land of the midnight sun.” Naturally, the trip also connected me with several Leading Tones composers and included a stellar concerto performance by talented young musicians. The first destination on my journey was deep into the Finnish countryside, where a unique music camp is held every year for both adults and children. The Suomen Työväen Musiikkiliitto (Finnish is an impossibly difficult language--let’s just call it “STM”) music camp in Aitoo, Finland, hosted over 100 student, amateur, and professional musicians. The STM camp is unlike any band experience here in America. Bands are organized by ability level, not age. The bands range from the A-Orchestra, which performed music such as Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, to the D-Orchestra, which is a band that teaches complete beginners how to play a wind instrument in an ensemble. In each of the bands, adults sit alongside children and perform together throughout this 10-day-long intergenerational music camp. I had the opportunity to study saxophone with Leading Tones’ own Daniel Gordon. I met Dan at the STM camp back in 2011. In a camp entirely comprised of Finns, I was shocked to discover that my saxophone teacher was an American guy who had busked across Europe twice with his soprano saxophone and studied with both Sigurd Rascher and Jean-Marie Londeix (two completely different ends of the classical saxophone spectrum). How did this guy end up at a music camp in the forests of Finland?! While that’s a story for another day, it goes without saying that we have been great friends for many years, and our time at the camp was a blast! On the second day of rehearsals with the B-Orchestra, a gaggle of bassoonists stood in front of the ensemble and played Janne Ikonen’s concerto, Shipman’s Song. The soloists were comprised of teenagers and adults, all of whom had been studying the bassoon for around four years. For each of them, this was their first concerto experience. From the first rehearsal to the concert, the piece was a great success! Janne, who was teaching percussion at the camp, was very pleased with the performance. The music of Marja Ikonen and Jukka Viitasaari was also featured in the STM camp’s final concert. The wind band scene in Finland is tight-knit; all of these composers attended the concert and supported the musicians. Janne, Marja, and Jukka are also incredibly popular composers in Finland. In fact, you will probably hear the music of at least one of the three Finnish Leading Tones composers at any given wind band concert. It was a delight to catch up with these three friends over coffee and pulla (Finnish donuts) at the STM concert. My time in Finland also included many serene and reflective moments that were heightened by the natural beauty of the countryside. In what other place can you watch a lakeside “sunset” at midnight? In what other place is sweating in a sauna set at 80 degrees Celsius (176 degrees Fahrenheit!) not just a fun activity to do with friends but also a way of life? Where everyone’s favorite “candy” tastes like salted black licorice and the rye bread is darker than the midsummer evening sky, Finland is definitively a unique country. My experiences at my dear friend, Hanna’s, family cabin at the lake will surely shed some new light onto my next performance of Marja Ikonen’s A Day at the Lake. My day around the bustling streets (and rollercoaster rides!) in Helsinki with my friends, Marjo and Risto, reminded me of the festive energy of Jukka Viitasaari’s Three Aspects of the Toddler Song. Finally, the vast forested landscape and the stoic tradition of sitting quietly in the sauna brought me back to the Shipman’s Song. Finnish traditions, cultural and musical, are certainly worth exploring. I’ve found that Finnish music sounds and feels just a little different than what I’m used to. With Sibelius’ masterworks and the scores of world-class Finnish conductors, what better way to embrace this country’s culture than through its music? AuthorMelanie Brooks is the Director of Bands at Winona State University and co-founder of Leading Tones Music, LLC.
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 Daniel Gordon is a Professor of Music at Plattsburgh State University of New York, where he teaches studio saxophone, directs the Symphonic Band, and teaches various classroom courses. He is founder, President, and Music Director of the Adirondack Wind Ensemble, a professional wind orchestra that consists primarily of music educators from around upstate New York. He is also a founding member of the Frontier Saxophone Quartet and the Metamusic Trio (saxophone, violin, and piano), both comprised of performers from the Plattsburgh region and Montreal. He has served as Music Director of the McGill University Wind Symphony and the Adirondack Youth Orchestra. About his Old McDonald Concerto, composer Daniel Gordon explains, “The idea of concertos for beginning players inspired me to write this piece…Beginners deserve to experience the thrill of being a concerto soloist just like older and more experienced players.” A collegiate and adult amateur band director and saxophonist by profession, Gordon had experimented with mixed-ability-level concertos with his ensembles prior to composing Old McDonald. In fact, he introduced me to Petri Juutilainen’s beginner-level concertos several years before my 2016-2017 pilot study and the 2017-2018 project. Seeking to experiment with creative performance experiences between the audience and musicians, he had great success programming Juutilainen’s concertos with local elementary school students as soloists with his adult community band, the Plattsburgh State University Symphonic Band. When the idea arose of commissioning many concertos for young soloists, Gordon was interested in contributing to the repertoire. Specifically, he aimed to write a piece that would be a crowd-pleaser. He wrote, "I’m thinking of writing a simple piece based on Old McDonald, because in my experience, the kids’ concertos based on familiar material were the most successful. I’d like the soloist to play the theme three times (it has five pitches in it), with members of the ensemble making different animal noises at each statement of the theme (clarinet mouthpieces will be geese, half-valve trumpet will be a horse, and glissando bones will be a cow." Ultimately, Gordon created his Old McDonald concerto with six verses featuring various instruments in the wind band as farm animals. Three of the verses (“Duck,” “Sheep,” and “Shark”) are optional, and the three verses of “Cow,” “Horse,” and “Geese” are required. The concerto is between 5’30” and 3’00” in length, depending on how many verses are performed. Each verse showcases a different group of instruments from the band with extended techniques, such as a trumpet horse whinny, and musical quotes, such as the William Tell Overture. The accompaniment therefore is engaging for advanced-level players, while the soloist repeats the same five-note melody in the familiar key of E-flat major. Finally, the solo part is designed to include a variety of instruments. Gordon wrote solos in C, B-flat, E-flat, F, and bass clef, making it possible for any wind band instrument to perform them. Gordon’s background in pedagogy proved especially useful to him as a composer. In a personal e-mail correspondence, Gordon wrote, “I think that part of the reason I ‘get’ this is because I have experience as a conductor who deals with ensembles of limited skills. I have learned what works and what does not, and put all of that to use in this piece. I have always believed that my activity as a conductor informs my instrumental playing and vice-versa. I think it is true of composing, too. Far too many composers are not performers, and as such they just don't get what works in the real world. The worst is the frequent mentality of composers (and performers) that harder is better. I also have a great appreciation for making something of quality with limited technical demands. The finest example of this, which has inspired me, is Dr. Seuss. This hit me like a ton of bricks one day while I was reading The Cat in the Hat to my then 6-year-old daughter. I suddenly realized that over 90% of the words in that book are one syllable. It takes real craft to write an interesting story using almost exclusively one-syllable words.” Old McDonald Concerto has been performed in Finland by the Finnish Navy Band and by the Junior Wind Band at the Turku Conservatory, as well as at the Building Bridges Through Music Festival at Arizona State University. AuthorMelanie Brooks is the Director of Bands at Winona State University and co-founder of Leading Tones Music, LLC.  Stephen Mitton There are very few times when I have been so moved by a concert featuring young musicians than I was at Arizona State University's recent Concert Band and Philharmonia concert. Three of Leading Tones Music's composers (Eric Xu, Zachary Bush and JP Lempke) had works premiered at the event by grade school soloists from The Harmony Project Phoenix - an organization dedicated to providing after-school music lessons to students who otherwise might not have the opportunity. The ASU Philharmonia accompanied seven students ranging in age from seven to fifteen on new pieces for string orchestra written specifically for the project. Eric Xu's Brightly as the Summer Sun featured grade 1 flute and clarinet playing simple intervals over rich and dynamic string writing. While the young performers seemed a little nervous to play in front of so many people, the warmness of the audience was palpable. Xu's piece was followed by Dominic Dousa's lush and lyrical Songs from a Mountain Trail, which featured three soloists on the violin. Dousa's brilliant string writing in the accompaniment made me forget for a moment that the simple melodies in the solo part were performed by students who had only been playing for a year or less. The rousing applause that followed made it clear to me that many in the audience had similar experiences. Zach Bush's concerto for double bass, Dusk Mountain, showed young bassists that there is equal room in the spotlight for their instrument as any other. Bush's energetic solo part showcased the great strengths of both the low and high ranges, and represented an optimism for an expanded pedagogical bass repertoire in the future. Perhaps the most daring offering of the evening, however, was JP Lempke's aleatoric Fill in the Colors White. Pedagogical works rarely feature nonstandard notation, harsh dissonances, or sounds borrowed from electronic music (Lempke's usual fare). The inclusion of all three elements made Fill in the Colors White a standout piece of the evening, which was otherwise almost entirely consonant and tonal. The singular experience of hearing Lempke's shifting textures was only heightened by the fact that the violin soloist was perhaps the youngest of the group. This year's collaborations between ASU and The Harmony Project Phoenix have clearly demonstrated the educational and cultural value of mixed-level musical experiences involving living composers. In nothing was this made more apparent than the ear-to-ear smiles of the young students as they acknowledged their audience's appreciation. The future of such collaborations is indeed bright. AuthorStephen Mitton is a full-time music teacher in Phoenix, Arizona and co-founder of Leading Tones Music, LLC.  Melanie Brooks Leading Tones Music made its official debut this past weekend at the College Band Directors' National Association (CBDNA) West/Northwest Regional Conference on March 21-24. Hosted by Dr. Andy Collinsworth at Sonoma State University, the conference consisted of daily lectures, presentations, and performances by some of the best ensembles in the country. I was honored to give a presentation about the Concertos for Young Soloists project and the Building Bridges through Music festival. Attendees explored ways to engage with young musicians in meaningful collaborations and also learned about the exciting new repertoire that was created by composers from around the world and is now being published and promoted by Leading Tones Music! I was fortunate to have many meaningful conversations with college band directors and composers amidst the idyllic landscape of the Sonoma Valley (and occassionaly over a glass of California vineyard-fresh wine!). I left the conference feeling uplifted about the great potential of mixed-ability-level music. Our Concertos for Young Soloists series is just the beginning of an exciting journey to connect diverse communities together in purposeful collaborations! |
Photo from g e g e n l i c h t