A Western Fanfare - Redwood Symphony

When was the last time you listened to a work of a 21st-century American classical composer that was unabashedly tonal? A composer who attains that holy grail where melody is key, and the melodic line genuinely sings in breathtaking radiance? Where the rhythmic momentum is both captivating and compelling through to the end of the piece? And, you find this in a work for seven trumpets!! Yes, at times we get this from Philip Glass (especially in his films scores), and John Adams to be sure, but to some audiences there is always a few pieces of the musical puzzle missing, and for others, accessibility is a hard-fought battle. While an individualist in his numerous and multi-faceted works, prolific composer Eric Ewazen continually sweeps his audience along with him in his sonic realm, and communicates with a musical language that is at once immediate and strongly felt.

Ewazen’s background, while facile in all styles of classical and contemporary music (including jazz) is quintessentially American. He was born in 1954 in Cleveland, Ohio, and received his B.M. At the Eastman School of Music, and M.M. and D.M.A. degrees from The Juilliard School. His teachers included some of the best pedigreed composers that the American academic institution had to offer during this time: Samuel Adler, Warren Benson, Milton Babitt, Joseph Schwantner and Gunther Schuller.

Since then, Eric Ewazen has become known as one of our mainstream American composers in the recognizable tradition of Aaron Copland and Howard Hanson. On the faculty of the Juilliard School since 1980, Ewazen enjoys an international reputation for his very accessible and discernible American style. While he has composed in every acoustic genre except opera and musical theatre, his music for brass instruments is part of the repertoire of every conservatory and professional brass ensemble in the U.S., and, with his large scale orchestra and wind ensemble works, has become part of the fabric of the American concert scene.

His works have been commissioned and performed by numerous soloists, chamber ensembles and orchestras in the U.S. and overseas (most recently, Charleston Symphony, West Virginia Symphony, Orquesta Sinfonica de Tenerife in Spain, Orquesta Sinfonica Carlos Chavez in Mexico City, Orchestre de la Garde Republicaine in Paris, the Jeju Music Festival Wind Ensemble in Korea and the Moment Musicale Orchestra of Taiwan . He has been lecturer for the New York Philharmonic’s Musical Encounters Series, Vice-President of the League of Composers–International Society of Contemporary Music, and Composer-In-Residence with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York City.

Fantasia for Seven Trumpets (1995) is a large, joyful fanfare in one movement. The trademarks of Ewazen’s brass writing heard in his Western Fanfare, Frost Fire and Colchester Fantasy brass quintets, as well as in his large wind ensemble work, Shadowcatcher, are well accounted for in ‘Fantasia.’ The opening, brilliant fff fanfare sweeps rapidly into his signature fluidic and lyrical melodic motifs. ‘Fantasia’ then traverses the entire gamut of brilliant trumpet writing from sumptuous, rich brass chorales, visiting spacious evocations of picturesque vistas reminiscent of Bartok and Janacek, and includes Ewazen’s own unique contemporary style of “hocketing” a melodic theme between the instruments.
Fragments of the the original fanfare and melodic theme are heard in an extended development section that is punctuated by pointillistic entrances and rapidly swirling pyramids of sound cascading in quick succession into ensemble tutti’s and soli between the instruments ~ continually and dramatically shifting dynamic contour.
Following the pronounced development section, Ewazen takes a delightful turn and heads into a brief scherzo with trumpets in mute, and a lush solo line laid over the top of rapidly turning syncopated rhythms, gradually emerging as undulating arpeggios that support further keening solo lines shared among several of the trumpets. The chorale, which follows, is the composer at his best displaying breathtakingly beautiful ensemble lines that sing out from the texture.
The chorale gradually works its way into a brief marionette-like waltz bringing back the pointillistic interplay heard earlier, and a recap of the original fanfare returns intertwined with the initial solo theme. Ewazen then takes us out much like he brought us in, with the trumpet ensemble tutti with the sounds of the glorious opening fanfare.
‘Fantasia’ was written for the Juilliard Trumpet Ensemble, and has subsequently been performed throughout the United States and Europe. Redwood Symphony last performed a work by Eric Ewazen when the Redwood Symphony Brass opened our November 2007 program with his Western Fanfare for brass quintet. (Program Notes by Stephen Ruppenthal)