LEWISBURG, Pa. — Bucknell University will serve as host of the 78th Annual Pennsylvania Intercollegiate Band Festival, culminating in a free performance beginning at 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 8 in the Weis Center for the Performing Arts.
The 100-piece ensemble comprises students from 20 colleges and universities from throughout the Commonwealth.
“It’s a rare and wonderful thing when so many college students come together to rehearse and perform with one another. This event is all the more notable in that composer Frank Ticheli will serve as the festival’s guest conductor,” says the festival host, Bucknell Professor William Kenny, music. “Ticheli is a true luminary in the band world. I’m not sure if any composer of the past 40 years has contributed so many exceptional compositions to the band medium–with many of those pieces having become standards of the repertoire.”
The program will include works by Ticheli and works by Percy Grainger and Omar Thomas. “Having all these works performed on one program, in many cases conducted by the composer himself, will be memorable for student participants and audience members alike,” said Kenny.
Ticheli joined the faculty of the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music in 1991, where he is professor of composition. From 1991 to 1998, Ticheli was composer in residence of the Pacific Symphony.
His orchestral works have received considerable recognition in the U.S. and Europe. Orchestral performances have come from the Philadelphia Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Dallas Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, the radio orchestras of Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Saarbruecken, and Austria, and the orchestras of Austin, Bridgeport, Charlotte, Colorado, Haddonfield, Harrisburg, Hong Kong, Jacksonville, Lansing, Long Island, Louisville, Lubbock, Memphis, Nashville, Omaha, Phoenix, Portland, Richmond, San Antonio, San Jose, Wichita Falls, and others. His clarinet concerto was recently recorded by the Nashville Symphony on the Naxos label with soloist James Zimmermann.
Ticheli is well known for his works for concert band, many of which have become standards in the repertoire. In addition to composing, he has appeared as guest conductor of his music at Carnegie Hall, at many American universities and music festivals, and in cities throughout the world, including Schladming (Austria), Beijing and Shanghai, London and Manchester, Singapore, Rome, Sydney, and numerous cities in Japan.
In addition to composing, Ticheli has appeared as guest conductor of his music at Carnegie Hall, at many American universities and music festivals, and in cities throughout the world, including Schladming (Austria), Beijing and Shanghai, London and Manchester, Singapore, Rome, Sydney, and numerous cities in Japan.
Ticheli is the recipient of a 2012 “Arts and Letters Award” from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, his third award from that prestigious organization. He is a two-time winner of the NBA/William D. Revelli Memorial Band Composition Contest, first in 2006 for his Symphony No. 2, and then in 2023 for Lux Perpetua. Other awards include the Walter Beeler Memorial Prize and First Prize awards in the Texas Sesquicentennial Orchestral Composition Competition, Britten-on-the-Bay Choral Composition Contest, and Virginia CBDNA Symposium for New Band Music.
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CONTACTS: William Kenny, 570-577-2238, kenny@bucknell.edu; Mike Ferlazzo, 570-238-6266, mike.ferlazzo@bucknell.edu