ESU Concert Band to Present Spring Concert

Brian Hodge conducting the ESU Concert Band

Posted by: Elizabeth Richardson on April 23, 2019, No Comments

America’s musical heritage, both familiar and unfamiliar, will be highlighted in American Vignettes, the 32nd annual spring band concert of East Stroudsburg University’s concert band on Thursday, May 2 at 7:30 p.m. in Cecilia S. Cohen of the University’s Fine and Performing Arts Center.

Brian Hodge, director of Warrior Bands, will conduct a program that includes Fanfare for the Common Man and The Promise of Living by Aaron Copland; The Thunder by John Phillip Sousa; “After the Thunderer,” Movement II from Symphony on Themes of J. P. Sousa by Ira Hearshen; and his own arrangement of the hymn, Nearer My God to Thee.

Band member Caitlyn McAtee, a senior majoring in history from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., noted that one piece on the  program, Symphony No.1’In Memoriam Dresden’, by contemporary American composer Daniel Buckvich may be new to many members of the audience.

“This particularly moving piece evokes the bombing of Dresden, Germany by the Allies during World War II,” McAtee said. “The beautiful interactions between the different sections of the piece are especially powerful in evoking the event.”

Noting the diversity of the program, McAttee added that, “Leonard Bernstein’s Selections from West Side Story is always fun to play since so many people enjoy this familiar piece from American musical theatre.”

The concert, sponsored by the ESU department of theatre, is open to the public at no cost.  For more information about the concert, please email esuarts@esu.edu or call the Fine Arts and Performing Arts events line at 570-422-3483.