World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles International Conference
University of Louisville Wind Ensemble
Send-Off Concert
Monday, July 18, 2022
7:30 P.M.
Comstock Concert Hall
University of Louisville
International Jury Invites University of Louisville Wind Ensemble to perform at WASBE Conference 2022!
The World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles Conference is a unique celebration of symphonic wind music, hosting the best wind bands and ensembles, conductors, musicians and music experts from around the world. This biennial event has taken place in different cultural centers all over the globe for the last 40 years. The WASBE Conference Prague 2022 will be a special one, thanks to its link to Karel Husa, a Grawemeyer Award and Pulitzer Prize winner and because of its unique location in the heart of his beloved Prague. The World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles is the only international organization of wind band conductors, composers, performers, publishers, teachers, instrument makers and friends of wind music. It is completely dedicated to enhancing the quality of wind bands throughout the world and exposing their members to new worlds of repertoire, musical culture, people and places.
The WASBE Conference 2022 will take place on the Slavonic Island in Žofín Palace, a very special venue in the heart of Prague, situated next to the National Theatre on the Vltava River. The palace will be exclusively dedicated to the WASBE event, along with other venues in the historical center of Prague, which will host open-air concerts. The neo-Renaissance Žofín Palace is one of the most important cultural and social centers in Prague– which regularly hosts concerts, conferences, and balls. The Great Hall of the Žofín Palace regularly hosts the most important personalities from the economic, political and cultural life of the country and from abroad. In November 1882 Bedřich Smetana’s cycle of symphonic poems, My Homeland (Má Vlast), was performed at Žofín Palace for the first time.
In addition to several elite Czech wind ensembles, eight other ensembles hailing from Spain, Germany, South Korea, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States have been invited to perform. These ensembles were selected through an international audition process. The University of Louisville Wind Ensemble has been invited to perform on the final day of the conference, Saturday, July 23, 2022. The concert will contribute to the Husa Celebration with performances of his Concertino for Piano and Wind Ensemble, featuring University of Louisville faculty artist, Dr. Anna Petrova, as soloist as well as his symphonic work, Cheetah. The latter was commissioned by the University of Louisville Division of Music Theory and Composition for the University of Louisville Wind Ensemble, and it is Husa’s final work for the wind band medium. The world premiere was given by the University of Louisville Wind Ensemble in a 2007 Celebration of Grawemeyer Composers concert in Carnegie Hall. During July of 2007, the University of Louisville Wind Ensemble performed the European premiere of the work at their first WASBE Conference appearance in Killarney, Ireland. Of that performance, noted British conductor and WASBE Past President, Timothy Reynish noted that Husa’s “Cheetah … has to be played as brilliantly as this. Frederick Speck is a meticulous conductor, and the ensemble was on outstanding form, throwing Husa’s virtuosity off effortlessly… a concert which centered on the Grawemeyer composers Husa, Penderecki, Takemitsu and Joan Tower, and this was an intriguing, brilliantly played and conducted programme.” In addition to the performance, Dr. Amy Acklin, Associate Director of Bands will present a lecture on Husa’s Cheetah.
To view the University of Louisville Wind Ensemble program for the WASBE International Conference 2022, please click here.
For the complete WASBE 2022 program, please click here.