The Illinois State University Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts and School of Music invite all to attend the Wind Symphony concert on Sunday, November 17, at 3 p.m. in the Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall.

“We are excited to welcome numerous guests to our stage for a performance of a new piece that stretches the confines of genre,” stated Director of Bands and Wind Symphony conductor Anthony Marinello.

Will Healy’s Passages (2023) will feature multigenerational soloists including vocalist Isabella Green, jazz saxophonist Darius Botley, and two emcees (rappers). Green is a sophomore vocal performance and music education major and Botley is a senior jazz studies and music education major at Illinois State.

“We are excited to collaborate with Will Healy as our guest composer as well as emcees Grill Billyenz from Normal, Illinois, and Deshawn McKinney from Madison, Wisconsin,” said Dr. Marinello.

Billyenz, a rapper and writer, attended Metcalf School and is an alum from the Illinois State University Arts Technology Program (now the School of Creative Technologies). He has released eight albums, with his most recent one being the Granola Pedagogy Academy, which he describes as a collection of lifestyle soundscapes providing the listener insight into his everyday life—almost like a personal diary.

McKinney is a writer “working in whatever medium is best to tell the story.” His works appear in journals such as Lolwe, Ploughshares, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry. He has performed for and built with audiences around the world. His art, grounded in hip-hop, often explores the delicate balance of existence. His debut chapbook, father forgive me, was published by Black Sunflowers Poetry Press in 2021. His first full length collection is releasing this fall.

Embracing the spirit of musical exploration and creating captivating narratives that traverse genres in his compositions, Healy’s pieces reflect his deep connection to collaboration and innovation. Healy is the artistic director and founder of ShoutHouse, a collective of hip-hop, jazz, and classical musicians in New York City. ShoutHouse has performed at esteemed venues including the Kennedy Center, National Sawdust, le Poisson Rouge, Verizon Hall, and Jazz at Lincoln Center, and premiered over 50 new works.

Like the music of ShoutHouse, Passages allows a collaborative space for hip-hop, jazz, and classical musicians to perform together. Language is a unifying theme for the work in which emcees, a singer, a jazz soloist, and dozens of instrumentalists attempt to communicate a single narrative through music and words.

In his composer notes, Healy shares that with this piece he visualized that “tension and opposition among styles would become a basis for playful structural shifts and dynamic musical conversations” within the stories of each of the three movements. He explains that “as with ShoutHouse performances, the emcee lyrics are always written by the emcees, so while the singer’s lyrics remain the same among performances, the rapper lyrics will change depending on the featured soloist.”

Passages received the Beeler Prize in 2024, selected from 270 compositions.

The second concert of the 2024-2025 Wind Symphony concert season will open with Steven Stucky’s hauntingly beautiful Funeral Music for Queen Mary (1694/1992). Commissioned by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the piece is part transcription of the original music written by Henry Purcell for the funeral of Mary II of England, who died on December 28, 1694, and part Stucky’s own realization “through the lens of three hundred intervening years.”

The first half of the concert will also include Augusta Read Thomas’s magneticfireflies (2001); William Grant Still’s Summerland for Wind Ensemble arranged by Dane Teter (1937/2013); and Donald Grantham’s Baron Piquant on Pointe (2011) with guest graduate conductor Dr. Useon Choi

Chicago-based composer Augusta Read Thomas describes her piece magneticfireflies as “very rhapsodic, lyrical, rich and majestic, but also quite playful. One of the main intentions of this music is the juxtaposition between stark, bold, individual colors, such as a loud solo trumpet, Mahler style, with a completely blended timbre, Debussy style.”

Originally composed for his three-movement collection for piano titled Visions, Still’s Summerland for Wind Ensemble was arranged for various combinations throughout his career. The piece is described as a portrait of promised beauty in the afterlife and was named after the peaceful Heaven of the Spiritualists.

Grantham’s Baron Piquant on Pointe is one part of a four-part series of dance pieces based on characters drawn from Voodoo lore—the four Barons from the family Ghede (pronounced Gay-day) are the loas (spirits) in charge of the intersection between the living and the dead. Despite this grim association, the Barons have a lighter side. Notorious tricksters with a marked fondness for brandy and tobacco, all four dress alike in black tailcoats and tall black hats, dark glasses with one lens missing, and carry canes and smoke cigars. The music depicts both their dark and light sides.

Following a brief intermission, the second part of the concert will open with Percy Grainger’s iconic Irish Tune from County Derry (1918/1994), ed. Rogers. Although widely known by Frederic Weatherly’s lyrics “Danny Boy” published in 1913, the tune was shared with Grainger, and he arranged it for chorus in 1902 noting on the manuscript that it was an “Old Irish Tune, wordless and nameless.”

Will Healy’s Passages will complete the concert.

This performance of Irish Tune from County Derry and Passages is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Robert Carnochan, director of bands at the University of Miami.

Carnochan “was a dedicated conductor who was the epitome of a caring and compassionate educator,” said Marinello. “He led the charge to have Will Healy compose this new piece and conducted the world premiere last year.”

Tickets are $12 for general admission, $8 for seniors, and $6 for Illinois State University students, faculty and staff, and can be purchased in person at the Center for the Performing Arts Box Office on the campus of Illinois State University, by calling (309) 438-2535, or on the box office website.

The Illinois State University Wind Symphony is the University’s premier wind band and features the finest wind and percussion musicians on campus. Under Marinello’s leadership, the Illinois State University Wind Symphony has been invited to perform at the 2022 College Band Directors National Association North Central Regional Conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, twice at the Illinois Music Education Conference in Peoria, and for numerous band programs and festivals throughout Illinois.

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Additional information regarding upcoming events in the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts can be found on the University’s events calendar. You can follow Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts on social media, and keep up to date with fine arts news online.

If you need accommodation to fully participate in this program, contact the Center for the Performing Arts Box Office at (309) 438-2535. Please allow sufficient time to arrange the accommodation.