University Wind Symphony: An Interview with conductor Daniel Fabricius

In addition to being the Binghamton Wind Symphony's conductor and director, Daniel Fabricius is also a percussionist. When we met at his office on the Binghamton University campus, he was carrying crotales: a set of small, tuned cymbals. We discussed the Symphony’s final show of the Spring 2017 concert season - a concert showcasing the music of 20th-century American composers.

TRIPLE CITIES CAROUSEL: What is the concert called?

DANIEL FABRICIUS: The concert is called Made in America. The reference is to all the compositions being written by American composers, which is fairly common for band music, but not always. I was just trying to find that American theme with significant composers who have kind of left a mark on America through their efforts.

TCC: Let's talk about some of the composers whose music you're featuring. Eliot Del Borgo, who has published about 600 compositions, is a native New Yorker. He graduated from SUNY Potsdam in 1960. Which of his compositions will you be presenting?

DF: The piece by Del Borgo is called Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. You might recall that that's also a poem by the American poet, Dylan Thomas. Del Borgo used that poem as an inspiration for the composition. It's not like a programmatic work or anything, but just kind of gives the feeling of what the poetry is about. The piece was commissioned by a high school group in Washington State. There were two teenage girls that were killed tragically in an accident, and this was a memorial to them. So it kind of approaches the concepts of loss and death, and how to cope with them. It's a very interesting piece because, also, Del Borgo can be referenced to one of the other composers on the program; it was Vincent Persichetti. That's kind of another connection that I was looking for.

TCC: Vincent Persichetti taught not only Mr. Del Borgo - he also taught composers like Philip Glass and Peter [P.D.Q. Bach] Schickele.

DF: Yes, Persichetti was a major figure in mid-20th-century composition. He produced a lot of other good composers who were students of his. Persichetti is one of my favorites. He's written a lot of great pieces for band. I shouldn't say a lot - I think it was only 16 pieces - but that seems like a lot to me, and the significant piece that we're doing is his Symphony No. 6, which really was a brand-new way for people to look at band writing in the mid-1950s. That's the major significance of this piece, that it's kind of a turning point in the direction that composers were going, and certainly led by one of the greatest.

TCC: Charles Ives is another composer you're featuring, and he almost doesn't need any introduction. He was one of America's first modernist composers. I understand he even wrote a campaign song for President William McKinley.

DF; Well, that's likely! Ives is quite an unusual character because he was not really in the music business. He was in the insurance business, and he just composed for his own amusement. And a lot of times he wrote pieces and kind of stuck them in his attic. A lot of pieces were discovered years after they were written. This particular piece that we're doing is a transcription. He wrote a piano sonata, and this is one of the movements from the sonata called The Alcotts. The sonata references some actual people, or some figures in the community of Concord, Massachusetts. The Alcotts are, apparently, a family. It's a very interesting piece. I think that one of the things I like to do with our concerts is to play some things that people really want to hear, and then some things that people never heard of before. And this is likely, even though they might have heard of Ives before; it's probably unlikely that they've heard of this piece. It's really interesting-sounding.

TCC: I guess the one piece of Mr. Ives' that I remember best is his America Variations.

DF: Yes - we played that a number of years ago. Some of the compositional devices that he uses are apparent in a lot of his pieces, particularly polytonality, which is used by some of the later composers. I can even go back to Del Borgo, who wrote on the score to his piece that there's actually an Ives-ian section of his piece. So he was greatly influenced by what had happened before him, from Ives.

TCC: Which other composers are you planning to feature in this concert?

DF: The opening piece is a very common piece in band literature, written by Joseph Wilcox Jenkins, American Overture for Band: again, another piece from the mid-1950s written for the United States Army Band, I think. It features the French horn section in just a rip-roaring type of song, all original themes but it sounds like it's got that Americana type of sound, almost Copeland-ish sometimes. It's just a great opener to a concert. We've also got a traditional march in this concert, which is The Americans We, which I thought was a very appropriate title. But also, one of my favorite marches, [by] Henry Fillmore - a notable composer of marches, and composer of what they refer to as trombone novelties. He grew up during that great era of band music where bandleaders were like rock stars, in the early 20th century. He wrote a lot of compositions that were very memorable.

The piece that we haven't talked about is a very new piece, the Concerto for Tuba by Tom Davis. Tom Davis is a living American composer who lives in Canandaigua, New York. I've known Tom for many years and he's written a lot of music for both concert bands and jazz bands and other media. He's written his tuba concerto for another friend of mine, Michael Salzman, and Michael is going to be the soloist on that piece when we perform it in a couple of weeks. In Tom Davis' words, “This is a little bit of superhero material.” It's got a real sense of power from the extremeness of the tuba and the personality of the person it was written for. I think it's going to be a real treat for everyone to hear. It's a wonderful piece. I like it a lot because it's got a lot of percussion in it. If you know me at all, you know I'm a percussionist. There's a huge percussion section going on within the piece, and a lot of beautiful colors and textures. It's just a very interesting piece.

Made in America takes place on Sunday, May 7th, from 3-5pm in the Osterhout Concert Theater at the Anderson Center on the Binghamton University campus. Tickets for the concert are $7 general admission; $5 faculty, staff, alumni and seniors, and free for students, and are available at the Anderson Center Box Office from noon-5:30pm weekdays, by calling (607) 777-ARTS. They can also be obtained online at anderson.binghamton.edu, or at the door on the day of the show. For further information, call 607-777-2592, or visit the Music Department website, music.binghamton.edu. This event is sponsored by the Binghamton University Music Department.