Tarot | UBC Symphonic Wind Ensemble

UBC Bands

Symphonic Wind Ensemble
Robert Taylor conductor
Shruti Ramani guest artist
Hope Salmonson composer-in-residence
Maggie Whiteman & Michael Witt graduate assistant conductors

PROGRAM:

Hope Salmonson
Rediscovery – world premiere

Ralph Vaughan Williams
Flourish for Wind Band

J.S. Bach (arr. Holst/ed. Mitchell)
Fugue à la Gigue – Michael Witt, conductor

Gustav Holst (ed. Matthews)
First Suite in Eb, Op. 28, No. 1 – Maggie Whiteman, conductor

Julie Giroux
Riften Wed

Lindsay Bronnenkant
Tarot

Aakash Mittal
Salt March

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UBC Bands season opener features Lindsay Bronnenkant’s Tarot. Composed in 2021, this imaginative work follows in the footsteps of Gustav Holst, exploring his enthusiasm for the wind band and fascination with Indian rāgas, which he attempted to utilize in his famous Planets. Bronnenkant decided to compose a suite that applies Holst’s musical experimentation to a new topic: Tarot. Like astrology, Tarot cards have been used for divination, and as each planet in modern astrology represents specific characteristics and personality traits, so too does each Tarot card. Some elements of the Hindustani thāts, Karnātak mēlakarta rāgas, and pitch sets Holst references in his Planets are referenced in Tarot using a similarly Western approach to portray Tarot card analogs.

Building from this central work, the first half of the program features traditional masterworks by Vaughan Williams and Holst, while the second half is more forward looking. Julie Giroux’s Riften Wed portrays the epic beauty and eternal loss of the Elder Scrolls video game chapter SKYRIM. One of the composer’s favorite works, it is dark, deep, and gorgeous.

The closing work, Salt March, by composer, improviser, and saxophonist Aakash Mittal, is a confluence of sounds resulting from Mittal’s lived experience as a kid who played clarinet and saxophone in marching band and later studied Hindustani music, crafting a unique voice that has been described as employing “colourful dissonances, meditative silences, and angular rhythms to express environments and spaces ranging from the American west to the dense streets of Kolkata.” Inspired by Mohandas K. Gandhi’s non-violent protest of British colonialism, Salt March weaves the rhythms of south Asian processional drumming with melodies from the Indian raga tradition and songs associated with the 1930 march for freedom, an act of civil disobedience that would, in Gandhi’s own words, “shake the foundation of the British empire” and lead toward Indian independence.