The St. Olaf Band, dubbed "one of America's preeminent bands" by The New Yorker, will perform in the Quad Cities area as part of its 2014 national tour. The concert will take place on
Sunday, February 2, 2014 at 2 p.m. at Muscatine High School. This will be a free concert.
The St. Olaf Band's national tour will feature repertoire that includes David Maslanka's A Child's Garden of Dreams, as well as a work by the conductor entitled Scenes from a Life Danced. Other works on the program will include Overture for Band by John Heins, the second movement from Persichetti's Symphony No. 6, and Dan Welcher's Zion.
Founded in 1891, the St. Olaf Band is an ensemble noted for superb musicianship. Under the leadership of conductor Dr. Timothy Mahr, the St. Olaf Band performs the very best compositions and transcriptions for symphonic band, producing an exciting, crowd-pleasing style.
The St. Olaf Band is the oldest music organization at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, a campus internationally renowned for its high caliber of musical ensembles. The band has toured nationally since 1904 and internationally since 1906 when they performed a four-week, 30-concert tour of Norway, making them the first American collegiate band to tour Europe. The band has subsequently toured several times in Norway, Great Britain, Japan, and central Europe, with an upcoming tour to the Mediterranean planned for June 2014.
In October of 2011 the St. Olaf Band performed for King Harald and Queen Sonja of Norway during their visit to St. Olaf College, the second time they have had this honor on royal visits since 1995. After the King and Queen's visit to St. Olaf in 1995, the band toured Norway with the St. Olaf Choir and St. Olaf Orchestra in commemoration of the centennial of Norway's peaceful separation from Sweden.
In March of 1997 the St. Olaf Band was one of four college and university bands from the United States invited to perform for the American Bandmasters Association annual convention in San Diego, California. The band also performed during the opening concert of the 2004 National Convention of the Music Educators National Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 2013 the St. Olaf Band was selected through a blind adjudication process as one of only 10 collegiate wind ensembles to perform at the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) national conference at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Dr. Timothy Mahr '78, St. Olaf Band conductor and professor of music at St. Olaf College, is a nationally recognized composer with more than 60 works to his credit, including The Soaring Hawk, for which he received the ABA/Ostwald Award. Mahr has guest-conducted a number of professional and award-winning ensembles, including the United States Air Force Band and the United States Army Field Band, as well as intercollegiate and all-state bands in over 25 states. He is the principal conductor of the Minnesota Symphonic Winds, a featured ensemble at the 2008 Midwest Clinic, the largest international band conference in the world.
Watch video and listen to audio of the St. Olaf Band and learn more about the ensemble, current members and conductor at www.stolaf.edu/stolaf-band.
