Former co-director of University of Tennessee’s “Pride of the Southland” marching band, Dr. Edwin Powell, will be conducting Pacific Lutheran University’s Wind Ensemble at a shared concert with the Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences Band in the Creed Bates Auditorium in Chattanooga on Sunday, Jan. 25, at 7 p.m. Admission is free.
Now serving as PLU’s director of Bands and a professor of Music, Dr. Powell is well known in Tennessee, having taught conducting courses and music education methods at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. In addition to co-directing the marching band while at UT, he also served as assistant director of Bands and was responsible for the Symphonic Band.
“It's exciting to return to Tennessee where I spent five years before I came to PLU,” Dr. Powell said. “I look forward to reconnecting with colleagues and many former students while I’m there, and of course, sharing the talents of our students at Pacific Lutheran will be a treat.”
The 47-student ensemble will be performing a repertoire of compositions, including For Those Who Wait, a commissioned work by nationally acclaimed PLU composer Dr. Gregory Youtz that will premier on the three-stop tour of Tennessee.
For Those Who Wait was written in response to the numerous armed service members returning home wounded, physically or psychologically, after tours of duty in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. While much attention has been devoted to the heroism of those veterans, Dr. Youtz wanted to shine a light on those who wait at home.
“I tried, in this piece, to capture the experiences of friends and students of mine in the position of waiting - from the times when anxiety is just a general background worry, only half conscious in the mind, to those dark nights of the soul when fear overtakes everything. And through it all, there is nothing to do but to wait and hope,” Dr. Youtz explains.
The commissioning of For Those Who Wait involved a very unique experiment. Leveraging the national reputations of both Dr. Youtz and Dr. Powell as well as the PLU Wind Ensemble’s reputation for commissioning and performing new works, more than 60 schools, ranging from large universities to local high schools, funded the composition.
The PLU Wind Ensemble tours both domestically and internationally, representing a dynamic Department of Music comprised of 200 music majors and 400-500 music program participants each academic year. Most recently the ensemble toured in Australia and China.