Shenandoah Wind Ensemble to Give A Moving Tribute
by Don Worthington, The Winchester Star
February 4, 1999

In preparing for tonight's 8 o'clock free concert at Shenandoah University's Armstrong Auditorium, Joseph Lovinsky balanced time and talent. Lovinsky had to make sure he was in the right place at the right time. He measured the time it took to get from the auditorium's floor to the stage and finally backstage.

Adding to his task was he had to be sure composer and conductor Joseph Jay McIntyre knew where he was at all times. Eye contact between the two is critical.

But if Wednesday's rehearsal is any indication of what's to come tonight, Lovinsky, as well as McIntyre, have mastered the logistics as well as the music. The twosome are featured performers at SU's Symphonic Wind Ensemble concert.

McIntyre is the composer and conductor for "Salute!" which features Lovinsky playing French horn all over Armstrong Auditorium. Moving musicians around the concert hall isn't your usual concert fare.

McIntyre did it deliberately. The movement is designed to reflect the career of Barry Tuckwell, who retired last year after 16 years as conductor of the Maryland Symphony. They symphony commissoned McIntyre to compose a piece to honor Tuckwell. The result was "Salute" and Lovinsky, a member of the U.S. Army Band as well as the Maryland Symphony, was the French horn soloist.

Tuckwell was a coach, a conductor, a teacher, and a soloist, McIntyre said Wednesday. Salute reflects all those qualities, as well as Tuckwell's disagreements with the Maryland Symphony Board of Directors. A section of "Salute" reflects that time with dissonance. The direction on the music even reads "angry," McIntyre explained.

The movement of the horn soloist reflects Tuckwell's career: at first he's on the outside, then he's at the podium, and finally he's looking back, McIntyre said. "Moving makes the piece more difficult," Lovinsky said.

The piece ends on a hopeful note, McIntyre said. "Originally, I envisioned sadness at the end," Lovinsky said. "I changed my approach after talking to Joe."

Shenandoah University professor Scott Nelson was enthralled by "Salute" when he played it with the Maryland Symphony. With its soaring brass, pounding percussion, and varied meter Nelson thought, "this sounds like band music." He asked McIntyre to transcribe the piece for band.

In transcribing "Salute," McIntyre didn't opt for traditional methods. Usually when an orchestral piece is transcribed for band, the string parts fall to the wind instruments and the results are parts that are almost impossible to play.

In "Salute," McIntyre faced such a problem. He had originally written a violin part that had the violins holding a sustained note -- easy to do on a stringed instrument, where all the player does is continue to move the bow. McIntyre knew a wind player couldn't sustain the note long enough. His answer? He wrote two new percussion parts, one for marimba and one for vibraphone. Properly played, each is capable of a long, sustained note.

Tonight's performance is the second time the Symphonic Wind Ensemble has played the piece. It premiered the band arrangement at the Virginia Music Educator's Conference in November at the Homestead resort.

Tonight's concert also will feature a movement from the "Jeremiah Symphony" by Leonard Bernstein's; "The Thunderer" march by John Philip Sousa; "Elegy for a Young Man," a musical tribute to John F. Kennedy by Ronald Lo Presti; and master conducting student Oeida Hatcher conducting a movement from Emile Bernard's "Divertissement."