Wind Ensemble Concert At Limestone Set For April 14

The Limestone College Music Department will present “Hymns & Folk Tunes: The Essence of Wind Band” on Tuesday, April 14, at Fullerton Auditorium.

The annual Wind Ensemble concert will start at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free and the public is invited to attend.

The guest soloist is Dr. Eunjung Choi (seen in accompanying photo). She will be performing Edvard Grieg's only piano concerto, "Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, Movement I." Grieg's Concerto is his best-known composition. It is acclaimed as his masterwork, and is one of the most popular piano concerti among concert audiences.

A native of Seoul, South Korea, Dr. Choi currently serves as Assistant Professor of Piano and Coordinator of Keyboard Studies at Claflin University in Orangeburg, SC, teaching applied piano, class piano, piano literature, fundamentals of music theory, and music appreciation.

Dr. Choi was recently awarded a Major Grant from the Humanities Council of South Carolina, and has been presenting the lecture-recital series “Promoting South Carolina African-American Composers” around the state to increase the awareness of historical, political, cultural and social influences and impacts related to South Carolina African-American classical composers and their music.

Folk tunes and hymns have long dominated the world of wind band literature, as they have the genres of the Choral and Orchestral worlds. This is primarily due to a composer's intimate knowledge of national or military songs, children songs, or church hymns. The Limestone College Wind Ensemble will perform several of these now standard compositions for wind band including Variations on a Korean Folk song, Shenandoah, and Commando March.

The concert will include a premier of "For Those Who Wait," a work that Limestone College and Dr. Patrick K. Carney commissioned as part of a larger consortium. Composer Gregory Youtz stated, "'For Those Who Wait' is a meditation on the lives and thoughts of those who await the return of loved ones who are in harm’s way, or await their recovery from wounds physical or psychological. Based on the Lutheran chorale best known in English as ‘O Sacred Head Now Wounded,’ the piece is composed almost entirely of motives drawn from two settings by Bach, both from the Saint Matthew Passion."

Dr. Carney, the Director of the Wind Ensemble, serves as Director of Bands/Associate Professor of Music Education at Limestone. He is also the Director of the Limestone Marching Saints and various chamber ensembles.