Australian guest conductor to be featured at Feb. 27 SU Symphony Band and Wind Ensemble concert

Australian guest conductor to be featured at Feb. 27 SU Symphony Band and Wind Ensemble concertFebruary 25, 2003Judy Holmesjlholmes@syr.edu

The Syracuse University Symphony Band and Wind Ensemble will present a concert Feb. 27 at 8 p.m. in the Rose and Jules R. Setnor Auditorium in Crouse College. The concert is free and open to the public.

The featured guest conductor will be visiting professor Sharon Tolhurst, associate professor of music and the conductor of the Wind Ensemble at Avondale College in New South Wales, Australia. Tolhurst and Peter Acosta, director of the SU Marching Band, will direct the Wind Ensemble in “A Grainger Set,” a selection of works by Percy Aldridge Grainger including “Children’s March,” “Colonial Song” and “Molly on the Shore.”

Under the baton of John Laverty, director of University Bands, the Wind Ensemble will also perform selections from “The Danserye” by Teilman Susato and “To the Muses” by Daniel S. Godfrey, composer and professor in the Rose, Jules R. and Stanford S. Setnor School of Music, College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Acosta will also direct the SU Symphony Band in the performance of “Valdres” by Johannes Hanssen, “Folk Song Suite” by Ralph Vaughn Williams, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” by Johann S. Bach and “English Dances for Band, Set 1” by Malcolm Arnold.

The Symphony Band will also perform “Variations on ‘America'” by Charles Ives, based on the orchestral version by William Schumar. Conducting the piece will be Daniel Galyen, a graduate conducting associate in the Setnor School of Music.

Tolhurst is the former president of the Victorian Branch of the Australian Band and Orchestra Directors Association, has judged the Melbourne School Bands Festival and the Central Coast Eisteddfods, and has been a guest conductor in Victoria and New South Wales.