Loyola’s two semesterly concert band programs are presenting Loyola students and other participants with the opportunity to develop their skills with various instruments at different skill levels. However, unlike past programs, the Wind Ensemble has been granted the chance to be the first band in the United States to perform Kevin Poelking’s Sounds, Voices, and Dreams from Ukraine.
These two concert bands are divided by skill level, according to Alan Mills, conductor and coordinator of bands at Loyola. He explained that students, regardless of their major, go through a blind audition before being sorted into the more accessible University Concert Band, or the more challenging University Wind Ensemble.
“It’s a healthy situation for students to have two different ability levels as far as having one band that has a little bit more accessible music and one that is a little bit more artistically challenging for our advanced students,” Mills said. “And so that’s always good; it’s a good thing every semester we go through an audition process.”
Starting the second week of the semester, they have begun rehearsals for the upcoming concerts: a combined concert between the two bands occurring on March 11 and two additional separate concerts. The Concert Band will be held on April 22, and the Wind Ensemble will be held on April 23.
According to Mills, the Concert Band acts as an educational experience, not only for students who are trying to develop musical skills, but also for music majors who want the opportunity to learn a second instrument, which is especially important for music performance and music education majors.
“This is really important for professional musicians, like performance majors who might want to go play in a pit orchestra. A lot of times pit orchestras [have] few people, but the book that they get will have multiple instruments on it,” Mills said.
The Concert Band is also a new opportunity for advanced students to conduct band rehearsals themselves instead of Mills taking the lead.
Mills described the Concert Band as a place where one can see experiential learning, which is “where you take a lot of different kinds of learners and learning situations, and you put them all into one classroom, and you have all of these different interwoven outcomes that come through.”
With the blend of performers in the band, Mills expressed his excitement regarding how the rehearsals and performances will go.
“I’m really proud of the Concert Band,” Mills said. “I’m proud of what they’ve been able to accomplish this year. We’ve actually grown in membership from fall semester to spring semester, which means that they’re enjoying it. And this year we’ve also opened it up, so we have a lot of non-enrolled students participating in it.”
The Wind Ensemble, on the other hand, consists of the students who placed highest in the audition process, Mills explained. It is a symphony orchestra that also requires string players who perform in a separate audition as well as in the Wind Ensemble audition.
“It’s great, and I’m coming in and finding ways to find music that will serve those students well, that is advanced but is still attainable,” Mills said.
This semester, Loyola University was invited to be part of a consortium, where a group of people work together to find financial support to commission a supporter to write them a piece of music.
The Academic Symphonic Band of Ukraine reached out to Chicago composer Kevin Poelking to write a piece of music. According to Mills, Poelking agreed to the commission without knowing if he’d get paid or not, working on and producing Sounds, Voices, and Dreams from Ukraine as a gift for Ukraine in light of the recent hardships the country has faced after the Russian invasion.
After the Ukrainian band did a premiere of the piece, Loyola received the opportunity to perform the United States premiere of the piece.
“That’s actually a really big deal. I mean, we are the first,” Mills said. “There are a lot of universities. There are a lot of professional bands in the United States. Loyola University got that first one.”
Mills added that Loyola students were not the only participants in the band. Students have come in from Tulane University to perform in the band alongside community members. Since the practice times do not work for people who work 9-to-5 careers, the community members who do perform either have space in their schedule or are retired.
“The people who show up usually do so because they love it,” Mills said. “I’m really excited and proud for that.”
