Southeast creates chamber ensemble

The music department at Southeast Missouri State University already has several bands. Now there is one more to add to that list.

Chamber Winds was created in the spring, after university bands director Barry Bernhardt received a call from the president of American School Band Directors Association asking if the university had any ensemble to play at its national convention Thursday in St. Louis.

Bernhardt thought of this as an opportunity to finally bring the music department's plans for a chamber music ensemble to fruition. He said the association convention "gives us a chance to get the program off correctly."

Although the university has the Southeast Missouri Chamber Players, the group is semiprofessional and not limited to students.

A week before finals started, Bernhardt selected what he considered the band program's top players and asked them if they would be interested in the chamber winds and performing at the convention.

"I think all the students were really excited about doing chamber music," Bernhardt said. "It's something they don't get a chance to do."

Chamber music is performed by an ensemble, usually made up of three to eight musicians and usually without a conductor. The program being performed Sunday and July 1 will feature a saxophone and French horn quartet and a woodwind quintet.

"The great thing about chamber music is that you're almost always a soloist, you can't hide. The students have to step up to the plate and play their best," Bernhardt said.

The focus now is on the upcoming convention and the pre-convention concert on Sunday that Bernhardt said "gives us a chance to play before a hometown audience."

In Sunday's program, which is the same for the convention performance, Chamber Winds will perform "The Merry King," an English folk song by Percy Aldridge Grainger, "OCTOOT (S.8) for Wind Instruments" by P.D.Q. Bach and Gordon Jacob's "Old Wine in New Bottle."

Although the ensemble members have only rehearsed together a few times, Bernhardt said the "students need to learn that it's not like high school where you might rehearse two or three months for a concert. Here they might have three or four rehearsals before they perform, but that's what professional musicians do."

kalfisi@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182