PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 25, No. 16, March 2, 2006

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Plane, bus and 18 months of planning

By Melissa Mitchell, News Bureau Staff Writer
217-333-5491;melissa@uiuc.edu

Click photo to enlarge Photo by Larry Kanfer Applause applause The Illinois Wind Symphony rehearses at New York City’s Carnegie Hall prior to its concert on Feb. 17. Several UI faculty guest artists also performed at the concert, and the symphony received a standing ovation for its rendition of “Illini Fantasy,” a medley that included “Illinois Loyalty.”

When friends and fans of the university came out to support their home team – the UI Wind Symphony – during the band’s historic debut performance in New York City’s Carnegie Hall on Feb. 17, most of the Illinois faithful came dressed not in orange and blue sweatshirts, but in tuxedos, elegant evening attire and heirloom jewels.

And just before the concert, as the band’s supporters milled around inside the famous venue – with its ornate, domed ceiling trimmed with gilded cherubs and lyres, and box seats outfitted in red velvet – their focus was likely on the glamour and excitement unfolding around them at that moment.

But at least one person in the audience was taking in the spectacle from a different perspective. Looking down onto the main floor and concert stage from her second-tier balcony box seat, bands department secretary Ginny Sherman was witnessing the culmination of a year and a half of complex planning and logistics.

“Typing letters for Mr. Keene (the band’s director), paying bills, making sure checks got mailed, working on menu planning, communicating with the bus company, the hotel … I was responsible for making sure everything was done correctly and all parties were on the same page,” Sherman said. While most of the logistics involved – including handling group ticket sales for the campus and figuring out how best to move 62 band members, a handful of staff members, dozens of instruments and cases of music to New York and back – fell to assistant band directors Peter Griffin and Ken Steinsultz, Sherman provided the clerical support required to complete the transactions.

“Usually, Ken and Peter would start a particular project, making the initial contacts, then hand off to me to finish.”

As a reward for her efforts, Sherman was given the opportunity to accompany the band to New York.

“I was so grateful that Mr. Keene included me,” she said. “I felt that I was part of the team. I really appreciated being able to share in the excitement and fruition of the work.”

Also part of the team making it all possible was Lucinda Lawrence, assistant to the director and bands librarian. Lawrence handled all the music-related details of the trip – including assembling and packing all the sheet music and helping set up the stands on site at Carnegie Hall.

Griffin said bands director James Keene started the whole planning ball rolling more than a year ago by arranging the concert date with the presentation company, Choice Music Events;  selecting music for the program; locking in a rate for airfare to New York; and negotiating contracts with the hotel and Carnegie Hall.

Further complicating the planning plot, Griffin said, was the fact that the Carnegie Hall concert was not the only gig on the band’s New York tour schedule. During the week leading up to the show, they made performance stops at four middle and high schools in the metropolitan New York area. They actually started the tour in Illinois, with a performance on Feb. 13 at Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook. The next day, they boarded a plane from O’Hare International Airport to New York’s LaGuardia  Airport, with dozens of instruments and personal luggage in tow.

Griffin said the vast majority of the band’s students own their instruments and were responsible for carrying them on board with them. Larger pieces – including a drum case, 14 percussion cases and four music cases  – were transported as checked luggage.

But the largest instruments of all – notably a harp, bass drum, timpani, xylophones, marimbas and chimes – were rented on location in New York.

The students were transported by bus – two buses, actually – from point to point in the New York metro area, and housed by host families in the communities where they played.

Steinsultz said he made three trips to New York prior to the tour to work out logistics with the hotel and Carnegie Hall staffs, even checking actual travel times from one location to the next.

“We wanted to make sure we had that down,” Steinsultz said. “You don’t want to just take someone’s word for something like that.”

With so many details to manage, Griffin acknowledged that there was plenty of room for plans to unravel. Fortunately, only a few minor glitches surfaced during the tour – for instance, the harp was delivered to the wrong school at one point. But nothing cropped up that the able team of planners couldn’t handle.

“If we ran into a problem, we knew who to call,” he said. And, they had back-up plans in place at every point along the way.

“We brought an extra set of music and had a list of cell phone numbers for all the kids.”

Euphonium player Chris Barnum said the fantastic support provided by Griffin and the other bands staff members was key to their successful tour and Carnegie Hall performance.

“We didn’t have to worry about anything,” he said. “Ken and Peter did everything. That really allowed us to think only about our playing. So that was great.”
In turn, Griffin said, after the long  hours he and other staff members devoted to planning the tour, being able to hear the program’s best performers play – in top form – in the nation’s premier concert venue was all that mattered.

“The rewarding thing for me was to see and hear the UI band on the stage of Carnegie Hall and to hear how incredibly well and professionally they played,” he said. “And they knew they played well. That was the reward.”

Illinois Wind Symphony dazzles in Carnegie Hall debut

By Melissa Mitchell, News Bureau Staff Writer
217-333-5491;melissa@uiuc.edu

When the 62 members of the Illinois Wind Symphony and its conductor, James Keene, took the stage of the Isaac Stern Auditorium in New York City’s Carnegie Hall on Feb. 17, the abundance of Illini pride circulating through the historic venue was almost palpable.

“We walked out on stage and in the hall people were already cheering … and we hadn’t even played a note,” said tuba player Chris Combest, a music graduate student from Berea, Ky.

“The applause before they struck a note … that was incredible,” said Peter Griffin, assistant director of UI bands. “Some of the students were a little nervous, but ‘excited’ was much more like it. They knew the music cold … it was a matter of getting out and sharing it.”

That opening affirmation from the audience  – which included UI President B. Joseph White, Urbana-Champaign campus Chancellor Richard Herman and even Illinois alumnus and award-winning director Ang Lee – was just the confidence booster band members needed to shake off any pre-concert jitters and convert that energy into unbridled musical virtuosity.

From that moment on, Keene, his highly polished band and faculty guest artists Elliott Chasanov, Michael Ewald, Ricardo Flores, Kazmierz Machala, William Moersch, Mark Moore and Ronald Romm, were in command. The performers presented what came across to their audience as a flawless and balanced program of symphonic-band classics and contemporary wind-ensemble music, including New York premieres by Scott Boerma, David Gillingham and Shafer Mahoney. According to Keene, most of the pieces on the program had some sort of New York theme or connection.

And while the band hit the high notes all evening long, the audience didn’t miss a beat either. Never was that more apparent than near the end of the program, when “Illini Fantasy” – a medley of tunes that includes “Illinois Loyalty” – brought the house to its feet.

“To see all the university dignitaries stand up and start clapping, that was kind of cool,” said Chris Barnum, a euphonium player from Roselle, Ill.

One of those VIPs in attendance, Chancellor Richard Herman, was beaming immediately following the concert, as he slowly made his way out through the hall’s crowded lobby.

“It doesn’t get any better than this,” Herman said. “We managed to showcase our excellence and had people in from all over, including alumni from as far away as Arizona and Florida. It’s been a great week for Illinois.”

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