Sixty-nine years ago this week, the Eastman Wind Ensemble made its public debut with a Sunday afternoon concert in Kilbourn Hall.  It is surely no exaggeration to say that the concert on February 8^th, 1953 marked not only one of the Eastman School’s milestones, but also the start of a new era.  The concert not only gave exposure to a newly founded ensemble, but also promoted the concept of the wind ensemble which would, over the course of the next several decades, be enthusiastically embraced both at home in the U.S. and abroad.

No photographic coverage of the debut concert is extant; we only have the printed program, the master audio tapes, and two local press reviews. The master tapes have been digitally re-formatted more than once, ensuring the content’s continuing life.  The news coverage of the event was purely local, for no reviewers from out of town were present; unlike the Eastman School’s annual springtime Festival of American Music, when Olin Downes, the chief music of The New York Times, and other reviewers made annual visits to cover performances in Rochester, the Eastman School’s regular programming during the academic semester was covered only by the local music writers for both of Rochester’s daily newspapers.  Nevertheless, the fact of the debut was underscored by the announcement of same on the printed program, and by Maestro Fennell’s message of welcome which similarly appeared in the program.  (His closing paragraph, expressing his hope that the new EWE would provide “pleasure and stimulation for the people of Rochester for many years to come,” might now be seen as altogether modest.  Within just a few months, the EWE’s first commercial recording on the Mercury Records label would be heard on hi-fi sets in the nation’s living rooms, thereby launching the EWE on its tremendous public success.  Altogether, the Eastman Wind Ensemble enjoyed a fruitful relationship with Mercury Records, producing 25 separate recordings between May, 1953 and May, 1962.  Those recordings represented the most up-to-date recording technology commercially available at that time. The recordings were marketed both domestically and abroad, enhancing and cementing the EWE’s reputation in Europe and in Asia.

Frederick Fennell’s interest in bands had been a lifelong thing, going back to his days a high school camper at the National Music Camp (Interlochen, Michigan) and his having been high school drum major in the John Adams High School marching band in his native Cleveland.  As an Eastman undergraduate he wrote to one of his mentors, the legendary band director Albert Austin Hardin (1880-1958), “I am all for bands and that is where I intend to do my work.” (The letter is in the Albert Austin Hardin Papers at the University of Illinois; the Ruth T. Watanabe Special Collections holds a photocopy of same.)  After receiving his masters degree at the Eastman School in 1939, Fennell was appointed to the Eastman faculty as a conductor. With the exception of wartime service (1943-45) as National USO Music Advisor, during which time he was stationed in San Diego, California, he would continue throughout th­e ensuing years to direct the Eastman School Little Symphony, the Eastman School Junior Symphony Orchestra, and the Eastman School Symphony Band.  His concern for the status of band music continued to increase throughout the 1940s, particularly whenever he was confronted with that age-old question “Who needs that big old symphony band?”.  In 1950 Fennell won the Eastman School’s backing to organize the Kilbourn Hall Wind/Brass Program, a program under which he regularly rehearsed the Eastman School’s reed, brass, and percussion performers in repertoire tracing the development of wind literature. Eventually this program resulted in a concert performance which included the Rochester premiere of Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments. The success of that concert performance further prompted Fennell towards full formulation of his plan for the Eastman Wind Ensemble.

And so Frederick Fennell organized the Eastman Wind Ensemble in September, 1952 so as to meet what he perceived as the need for an ensemble of virtuoso caliber possessing the forces necessary to perform every type of music written for winds. His intention was to keep the instrumental forces as simple as possible; to that end, the ensemble would utilize no more than 45 players at its maximum. The resulting wind-brass-percussion corps would permit an almost limitless number of combinations of the three constituent groups in both large and small instrumentations. As Fennell pointed out in Time and the Winds (Kenosha, Wis.: Leblanc, 1954), the Wind Ensemble’s instrumentation would constitute the same orchestra for which Wagner scored Der Ring des Nibelungen, and which Wagner assembled at Bayreuth in 1876, together with a saxophone section and one alto clarinet, and minus one bass trumpet — the same wind section which Stravinsky used in 1911 for Le sacre du printemps. Such an instrumentation would permit the performance of all music written for wind instruments dating from the 16th century through to the present century.  (By the way, you can read the original manuscript copy of Times and the Winds at the Ruth T. Watanabe Special Collections in the Sibley Music Library.)

The debut concert’s programming was representative in that old and new music for winds shared billing on one and the same concert program.  The Mozart Serenade no. 10 was ideally balanced by the 20^th-century works by Wallingford Riegger and by Paul Hindemith.  Two of those works would be particularly significant for the EWE in the years immediately ahead; the Mozart and the Hindemith were both recorded for Mercury Records.  Further, the presence of the new music went hand in hand with Maestro Fennell’s interest in seeing new music composed expressly for the wind ensemble. The Mozart Serenade would continue to be a “fight song” for Fennell the conductor and also the arranger; he later made his own performing edition of the Serenade no. 10, published by Ludwig Music (c1993).

Frederick Fennell later recounted the founding of the Eastman Wind Ensemble and also the story of the Mercury Records recordings for author Roger Rickson, a California-based music educator and bandleader who was a staunch Fennell supporter and admirer.  Mr. Rickson’s book Ffortissimo: a bio-discogrqphy of Frederick Fennell: the first forty years, 1953 to 1993  (Ludwig Music Publishing, c1993) is an essential source for all who are interested in this musical development.  The Roger Rickson Collection at the Ruth T. Watanabe Special Collections is a valuable collection of all of the EWE recordings on the Mercury label, bringing together in one source each of the monaural and stereo issues, and also accounting for each album’s variant record jacket printings wherever such occurred.  Further, Maestro Fennell’s written account is preserved in his 1954 manuscript Time and the winds; a short history of the use of wind instruments: Background for the wind ensemble,  which resides in the RTWSC vault.

The programming of the first concert was truly representative in that old and new shared billing on one and the same concert program.  The Mozart Serenade was balanced by the 20^th-century work by Wallingford Riegger and by Paul Hindemith.  Two of those works would be particularly significant for the EWE in the years immediately ahead; the Mozart and the Hindemith were both recorded for Mercury Records.  Maestro Fennell later made his own performing edition of the Mozart Serenade no. 10, published by Ludwig Music Publishing in 1993.

All the rest is history. As the decades have passed, the Eastman Wind Ensemble has flourished under the direction of Dr. Donald Hunsberger and Dr. Mark Scatterday.  The EWE has continued to record and has gone on numerous tours, both domestically and internationally.  (In particular, the 14-year period 1990-2014 saw a Southeast Asian tour every other summer.)  The EWE has continued to represent the vanguard in concert programming for winds.  That has been no small legacy stemming from a Sunday afternoon recital in February, 1953.