Description
Shawn E. Okpebholo’s Concerto for Euphonium and Orchestra was premiered by Steven Mead at the 35th International Tuba and Euphonium Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio in June of 2008. The composer has this to write bout the piece:
“The first movement, “Windows,” was inspired when I was looking out of several windows one afternoon and noticing different scenes. While many different events were happening simultaneously, all seemed to be working in sync.
Movement II, “Invitation to Music,” is a re-orchestration of a movement of a song cycle I composed for soprano, clarinet, and piano. The song cycle, On Music, was set to the poetry of Beatrice Holz:
When music’s magic joins the wordsmith’s inspiration,
and crafted intuition transmutes poet’s art to song,
a wedding of miraculous dimension
invites our brief excursion to a spiritual realm
where music’s elements and time ephemeral
strive to be merged as one eternal bond.
“Guanabacoa,” the title of Movement III, is the name of a small town near Havana, Cuba where Afro-Cuban music is prominent, and where Ernesto Lecuona, a Cuban composer known for his Afro-Cuban music, was born. Lecuona’s composition, La Comparsa, uses a very distinct Afro-Cuban rhythm that is the basis of this movement.
solo parts included: BC, TC
