“AMERICAN SALUTE”: THE GSO POPS CONCERT
$20 for Adults, $15 for Seniors, $10 for Students
JOHN STAFFORD SMITH The Star-Spangled Banner Arr. Steven Rosenhaus
LEONARD BERNSTEIN Overture, Candide
AARON COPLAND “Four Dance Episodes” from Rodeo
“Buckaroo Holiday” “Corral Nocturne” “Saturday Night Waltz” “Hoe-Down”
DUKE ELLINGTON “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” IRVING MILLS
Arr. Chuck Sayre
GEORGE & IRA GERSHWIN Overture, Crazy for You Arr. Jerry Brubaker
Arr. Douglas Wagner River Songs
Arr. Calvin Custer The American Frontier
JOHN PHILIP SOUSA The Stars and Stripes Forever
John Stafford Smith (30 March 1750 – 21 September 1836) was an English composer, church organist, and early musicologist. He was one of the first serious collectors of manuscripts of works by Johann Sebastian Bach. Smith is best known for writing the music for “The Anacreontic Song”, which became the tune for the American patriotic song “The Star-Spangled Banner” following the War of 1812.
Leonard Bernstein (25 August 1918 – 14 October 1990) was an American composer, conductor, pianist, music educator, author, and lifelong humanitarian. He was one of the most significant American cultural personalities of the 20th century. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was “one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history”. As a composer he wrote in many styles, including symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and works for the piano. His best-known work is the Broadway musical West Side Story, which continues to be regularly performed worldwide, and was made into an Academy Award-
winning feature film.
Aaron Copland (14 November 1900 – 2 December 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as “the Dean of American Composers”. The open, slowly changing harmonies in much of his music are typical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. He is best known for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately accessible style often referred to as “populist” and which the composer labeled his “vernacular” style. Works in this vein include the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid and Rodeo, his Fanfare for the Common Man and Third Symphony.
Duke Ellington (29 April 1899 – 24 May 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and leader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death over a career spanning more than six decades. Born
in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward and gained a national profile through his orchestra’s appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. In the 1930s, his orchestra toured in Europe. Although widely considered a pivotal figure in the history of jazz, Ellington embraced the phrase “beyond category” as a liberating principle and referred to his music as part of the more general category of American Music. Irving Mills (16 January 1894 – 21 April 1985) was
an American music publisher, musician, lyricist, and jazz artist promoter.
George Gershwin (September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer, pianist and painter whose compositions spanned both popular and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris, the songs “Swanee” and “Fascinating Rhythm”, the jazz standard “I Got Rhythm”, and the opera Porgy and Bess, which gave birth to the hit “Summertime”. Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell, and Joseph Brody. He began his career as a song plugger but soon started composing Broadway theater works with his brother Ira Gershwin and with Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, but she refused him. Ira Gershwin (6 December 1896 – 17 August 1983) was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs in the English language of the 20th century
John Philip Sousa (November 6, 1854 – March 6, 1932) was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era known primarily for American military marches. He is known as “The March King” or the “American March King”, to distinguish him from his British counterpart Kenneth J. Alford. Among his best-known marches are “The Stars and Stripes Forever” (National March of the United States of America), “Semper Fidelis” (official march of the United States Marine Corps), “The Liberty Bell”, “The Thunderer”, and “The Washington Post”. Sousa began his career playing violin and studying music theory and composition under John Esputa and George Felix Benkert. His father enlisted him in the United States Marine Band as an apprentice in 1868.