Travis J. Weller

I am pleased to announce that “Journey to the Prairie” audio has finally been posted at Manhattan Beach Music. The recording is by Dr. Edwin P. Arnold and the Grove City College Wind Ensemble – thank you Doc and students! My thanks to sound engineer Dr. Joseph M. Pisano for his assistance as well! The piece should be available by September 1, 2011. For those of you who have been asking – for over a year now – thank you for your patience and support!

Now available from Wingert-Jones, Festival and Ballade for Winds was written for the 2009 Pittsburgh Diocesean Honor Band hosted by Bishop Canevin High School. I am especially proud of this piece as it was the first one I wrote completely away from a piano or keyboard. The work develops from the opening motifs, and after the energetic allegro spiritoso there is a lush and refelctive ballade – a real “jersey cow” section as Julie Giroux would say. There are recordings posted at both WJ and Pepper for your perusal. It is a great “festival” selection or concert opener for high school band at the grade 3 level. My thanks to the Pittsburgh Diocesean Band Directors for giving me the opportunity to share this music with them and work with such great kids. I know there are lots of good choices out there, but please consider Festival and Ballade for Winds as you make your selections for next year.

My thanks to Tad Greig and the Westminster College Wind Ensemble for their recording of “Rising Winds from the Valley”. The piece written for the Seneca Valley Freshmen Concert Band debuts tonight under the direction of good friends and colleagues Varden Armstrong and Bob Matchett.  The piece is now available from Bandworks, alongside great music from Patrick J. Burns and Chris Bernotas!

I am very pleased to have received an Editor’s Choice for “Festival and Ballade for Winds”, a piece I wrote for the 2009 Pittsburgh Diocesan Honor Band.  A recording should be up in the coming weeks at Wingert-Jones. Other new works coming this summer include “Moravian Dance” and “A West Highland Fanfare” from FJH, and “Siege of the Dark Castle” from Barnhouse.

I am delighted to announce that the West Ridge Middle School Wind Ensemble will perform Tales of A Medieval Warrior at the Midwest Conference in Chicago this December.  If you have not had the opportunity, check out the full score and recording on-line at FJH Music.

Four very short weeks ago, the band program at Mercer took a big leap as we started our year with a unit on chamber music that culminated in our Fall Chamber Recital.  Over twenty different selections were presented in the recital ranging from Handel, Haydn, and Mozart to Sousa, and John Williams.  You can read a full copy of the program notes and performance order by clicking here (a pdf will open in a new window (student names for security reasons have been removed, but instrumentation is identified).  During the next week, all 150 students in the band program will be taking a survey (created by Google Docs) on their chamber music experience.  The statements which the students are asked to respond to were created by some of my colleagues at Grove City College, Thiel College, Westminster College, and Slippery Rock University.  The students will use a Likert scale to respond to 16 different statements related to their chamber music performance in addition to the usual demographic information (gender, grade, ensemble).

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