Cities | Frost Symphonic Winds

Craig S. McKenzie, conductor

Kevin Joseph, graduate conducting assistant 

This concert explores how place shapes sound—and how composers, in turn, capture a city’s spirit in music for winds and percussion.

The journey begins in the clouds with Hiroki Yagisawa’s Machu Picchu: City in the Sky, an expansive portrait of the Incan citadel that rises and falls like the Andes themselves. James David’s Urban Light moves the panorama to a present-day streetscape, translating the pulse and shimmer of modern architecture into vibrant color and rhythm.

Paris comes into view next through Norman Dello Joio’s Scenes from the Louvre. The suite capturing the artistic spirit of the city of lights through Renaissance-inspired movements. Sir Charles Hubert Parry’s hymn Jerusalem, adapted for winds by Julie Giroux, shifts the focus to a city of pilgrimage and promise, its solemn chorale building to a luminous conclusion.

Finally, Thornton Boyer’s spirited Joyce’s 71st New York Regimental March transports listeners to 19th-century Manhattan.

Whether conjuring an ancient mountaintop, a sacred skyline, or a bustling boulevard, each work reveals a different facet of the urban imagination—inviting audiences to hear the places we inhabit, remember, and dream.

DATE AND TIME:

Sunday, September 21, 2025 4 pm

ADDRESS:

UM Gusman Concert Hall

Set a reminder here.

By ML Staff. Courtesy of University of Miami