Joseph T. Spaniola: Escapade: Music for Large and Small Ensembles
Big Round Records

A rather startling thing happens midway through the opening selection on this full-length collection of music by Joseph T. Spaniola: powered by brass and percussion, the boisterous Escapade exemplifies many of the hallmarks of a classical work, but then a transition occurs that sees The US Air Force Academy Band suddenly morph into a swinging big band, the ensemble's metamorphosis into a jazz orchestra taking but a moment to happen. In like manner, a handful of changes transpires in The Winds of the Quadrumvirate, though the album also includes pieces that hew to a particular style throughout. Regardless, a considerable amount of musical terrain is encompassed by these compositions, especially when the six are regarded collectively and not in isolation.

How fitting it is, then, that Spaniola not only holds the title of Professor of Music at the University of West Florida but is also the Director of Music Theory and Jazz Studies. It's also telling that before joining the university, he was the Chief Composer/Arranger for The US Air Force Academy Band, which, in fact, appears on two of the release's six pieces, the title work included. A scan of the artists, ensembles, and institutions with whom Spaniola's worked proves revealing, too: along with Reneé Fleming, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Brass Quintet, and the Eastern Wind Symphony, the list includes Frank Sinatra, the Boston Brass, and even Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen. That's versatility.

In its second appearance, The US Air Force Academy Band unites with Solar Winds for the ten-minute The Winds of the Quadrumvirate, the title referring to the quartet itself and the four cardinal points of the compass. Even more wide-ranging in scope than Escapade, the piece exudes an almost march-like militancy in its opening minutes before the onset of a lyrical, woodwinds-heavy sequence that quickly assumes a rather baroque quality with the addition of harpsichord. But then, much like the move that occurs in the opening piece, changes find the music venturing into jazz orchestra territory and even briefly flirting with waltz-based circus music. The stylistic shifts are so plentiful, the effect is almost jarring and not a little destabilizing.

Not all of the album's pieces are so inclined to change. Performed by the Solar Winds clarinet quartet, the three-part Klempirik Farms distills into musical form the emotions the composer felt upon reflecting on the family farm, an idyllic place that symbolizes for him “an ideal, a radiant place, a boundless source of peace, joy, and quiet strength.” In this ten-minute presentation, each movement's short yet still substantive enough to establish vivid character, from the spirited, jazz-inflected syncopation of “Shine On” and the dignified solemnity of “Fertile Ground” to the equally rambunctious and ruminative “Playful Hearts.”

At seventeen minutes the album's longest performance, the high-energy Dream augments euphonium player Danny Helseth (for whom it was composed) with violinists Mark Dorosheff and Nathan Wisniewski, violist Bryce Bunner, and cellist Christine Choi. In fashioning the material to capture the alternately agitated and restful episodes that occur during sleep, Spaniola devised an effective means by which to similarly capture Helseth's technical and expressive abilities. Commissioned and performed by the Eastern Wind Symphony, the single-movement Blow, Eastern Winds dazzles in the dynamism of its sound design, with percussion, brass, and woodwinds generating a mercurial forcefield that builds rapidly from soothing breezes into turbulent crosscurrents.

July 2019