Dallas Winds musicians at Meyerson Symphony Center. Photo: Todd Toney

After a year of being of away from the stage, Dallas Winds, the five-time Grammy award nominated wind band, is back with a live, in-person spring concert this Tuesday at the Meyerson Symphony Center.

Dallas Winds’ Artistic Director & Conductor, Jerry Junkin will lead the group with a program comprised of overtures, marches and sea shanties.

“We’ll open with the Barber of Seville Overture by Rossini, and we’re doing a couple of kind of obscure Beethoven military marches that he wrote fairly early in his career,” said Kim Campbell, Dallas Winds Founder and Executive Director. “Sea shanties are a big thing right now, so we’re doing three sea shanties by British composer Malcolm Arnold.”

Dallas Winds Artistic Director & Conductor, Jerry Junkin. Photo: Cora Allen

Also on the bill are two Dallas premiers–A new piece called Nihonbashi “Market Bridge” by American composer Julie Giroux. And American composer Viet Cuong‘s piece Bull’s Eye which was inspired by Pablo Picasso’s series of eleven lithographs of a bull.

“Picasso started with a real image of a bull and then deconstructed it to the bare minimum that would visually represent a bull,” said Campbell. “Cuong’s piece is using that as his source material. It starts out fairly lush, then as the piece goes, it tends to to come down to just the bare minimum of what would represent the music that represents the art.”

The concert will conclude with John Philip Sousa’s Washington Post March.

“This is a big deal for us and we literally can’t wait to see the audience again,” said Campbell.

“Coming back to this stage live is an extraordinary situation because now we’ve got the audience/performer feedback. We can play for ourselves, but that’s not really what it’s all about. It’s being able to interact directly with the audience. That’s the most exciting thing.”

The group is taking a number of  precautions to ensure the audience and performers are safe. All attendees must be masked and strict social distancing will be put in place. There will only be 22 musicians on stage versus the usual 50. And the audience is limited to 300 as opposed to 2100 normally.

The hour-long concert happens Tuesday, March 23 at the Meyerson Symphony Center. There will also be a livestream available for purchase. For tickets and other information can be found on the group’s website and their Facebook page.

Got a tip? Email Therese Powell at tpowell@kera.org. You can follow her on Twitter @TheresePowell13

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