Colin Maiwurm – Staff Writer
As classes start to wrap up, the bands on campus prepare for their final concert for the school year. With the choirs having their concerts last weekend, this weekend is filled with band concerts. The groups that are having concerts this weekend are as follows: Gustavus Wind Orchestra (GWO), Gustavus Wind Symphony (GWS), Chamber Winds, and the Handbell Ensemble. With all of these groups performing throughout the weekend, there will be many opportunities for people to attend at least one of these performances.
The Handbell Ensemble will be having their concert on Sunday from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. This concert will incorporate a variety of groups like the Disney ringers, who will perform Disney pieces; as well as the Christ Chapel Ringers, who will be performing hymns. In addition to these groups, there will also be a senior soloist. The Handbell ensemble focuses primarily on creating music only with bells by using different-sized bells to create different notes.
The GWO, GWS, and Chamber Winds concert will be on Saturday from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. This concert will feature senior soloists as well as senior conductors for various pieces. These ensembles focus on creating music with a large array of different instruments. While GWO and GWS consist of a large ensemble, Chamber Winds consists of only a few students, “Chamber Winds provides the 10 advanced performers from the Gustavus Wind Orchestra to perform in a traditional Harmonie Ensemble in pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, horns, and bassoons,” The Gustavus Website explains.
While all of these ensembles are different, they tend to follow a similar theme. This set of concerts’ theme lightly revolves around the feeling of Springtime. In addition to the theme being Spring, it is also about acknowledging the seniors in the ensembles and sending them out into the world. With this in mind, a majority of the soloists for these concerts will be seniors. Seniors will also be acknowledged at these concerts as it will be their final concert in these ensembles.
“At these concerts, we will hand out cords for the seniors for their graduation regalia . . . at these concerts there will be a few senior soloists to lift up the seniors,” Cantor of Christ Chapel in Chaplains’ Office and Music, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Organ and Handbells Chad Winterfeldt said.
In addition to these concerts, there will also be student recitals going on throughout the weekend. These recitals go on for around an hour and tend to include accompanists. The students who are performing tend to be seniors, but some can be juniors. The schedule for all of the recitals and concerts can be found on the fine arts webpage.
For those who cannot attend the concerts or recitals, these events will be live-streamed for anyone who wishes to spectate, “They are all live-streamed. If you go to the Gustavus Fine Arts web page, you will see on the sidebar all of the live stream information. The great thing is that they are also archived for a period of time,” Winterfeldt explained.
With the addition of these concerts being archived, friends and family members are able to access the recordings of these performances. If people are unable to navigate the Gustavus website, they can also find the live streams through youtube. In order to find the live streams and archived videos, they must search Gustavus Fine Arts and enter the Gustavus Fine Arts channel. Once they do this, they can access any of the live streams until the college takes them down in preparation for the next set of concerts.
Anyone who wants to go to these concerts is welcome and encouraged to go watch. These concerts are open for friends, family, and the Gustavus community; access to the concerts is free for everyone. “Musicians love audiences. I know that last weekend is always busy, but if anyone can find their way over to one of these concerts, it’s great for musicians to see the support,” Winterfeldt said.