Wind ensemble tunes up for show

The IU Wind Ensemble will perform their first free show of the season 8 p.m. tonight at 200 S. Jordan Ave.

Conductor Stephen Pratt said this will be his eighth year conducting the ensemble.

“This concert is sort of the culmination of our first few weeks of rehearsal,” Pratt said. “It’s very similar to a concert given by a professional symphony orchestra in terms of preparing the music, performing the concert and moving on to the next.”

Pratt said the ensemble takes performances seriously.

“We treat it very much like a musical you would go to at Carnegie Hall, except there you would spend a lot of money,” Pratt said. “Here in our hall, it’s free. It’s pretty neat.”

Pratt is a professor of music and director of bands and wind conducting at the Jacobs School of Music.

He has led the ensemble to play at several national conventions and in other distinguished venues, such as the American Bandmasters Association national convention and the College Band Directors National Association divisional and national
conventions.

The ensemble consists of about 52 performers, playing instruments ranging from flutes and piccolos to saxophones and clarinets.

IU’s ensemble is composed mainly of graduate students and only a handful of undergraduates.

“They are the finest players in the Jacobs school,” Pratt said. “Most of them intend to play professionally for the rest of their lives. They are an exceptional group of extremely talented players.”

At tonight’s performance, the ensemble will play compositions by Andrew Rindfleisch.

Pratt said that the ensemble is part of a group encompassing about 20 ensembles across the country that organizes compositions. A composer is commissioned to compose a piece, and each ensemble in the group is given first rights to performance.

Rindfleisch composed a piece for the ensemble’s performance tonight.

“(Tonight’s) performance will be the first one ever heard by people,” Pratt said. “Once we’ve played it, then other people will start to play it.”

Aside from Rindfleisch’s pieces, Pratt said the ensemble will play a very popular piece by Johann Sebastian Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565. The arrangement was done by Donald Hunsberger.

“One of the pieces we’re doing is one of the most famous pieces that everybody knows, if they ever saw ‘Fantasia’” Pratt said. “It’s a real famous piece."