Travis J. Weller

What a couple of weeks!!! It has been absolutely humbling to have so many performances of “American Visions” over the past few weeks – my sincere thanks to many friends and colleagues who made the piece a part of their spring concert.  My thanks to Drew Fennell and the River City Youth Brass Band for their world debut performance of “A Frontier Fought and A City Found” at the Spring Concert “A Pittsburgh Celebration” last Sunday evening.  It was an honor to write for such a great musician and conductor like Drew, and a group of outstanding musicians in the ensemble.

On the horizon – Pirates! (a 2009 J.W.Pepper’s Editor’s Choice) and Irish Jig for Young Feet will be available this summer from FJH Music.  Irish Jig for Young Feet is a delightful little 6/8 jig with some call and response between the percussionists and the winds players (and their feet!).  My thanks goes out to Tad Greig who was the first colleague to really give this suite (Pirates!) a boost of confidence when his wind ensemble did a recording for me (BTW – his Wind Ensemble played at the 2009 PMEA State Conference and they were ridiculously good!).  A second thank you to Brian Balmages – Brian really challenged me to develop the second movement beyond what I originally wrote.  He asked me great questions during the revisions, and I am really proud of what I created in the second movement.  A final thank you to Drew Fennell - Drew has handled several of my pieces now with some honor bands and the RCYBB.  He has been a good friend and supporter of the suite.  I started writing Pirates in 2006 – for it to finally find a home and get published for me personally is really special.   Read more…

I was honored to be asked by friend and colleague Drew Fennell to write for the River City Youth Brass Band.  They will present “A Frontier Fought and A City Found” on May 31, 2009 of this year.  The piece is a historical sonic potrait of the battles fought between the British and the French during the 1750′s around Pittsburgh.  You can read all of the program notes about it by clicking here.  I had the opportunity to meet several of the groups members at the Diocesean Honor Band Festival in January and over this past week at the PMEA Region Band held at Ambridge.  I am eagerly looking forward to this debut.  Drew is a great musician, and it is an honor to have him wave the stick and bring this music to life with such a great group of kids.  I chuckled out loud after seeing one of the French Horn students’ sweatshirt last Thursday.  It read -  “Rive City Youth Brass Band: Real Heavy Metal”.  This is going to be awesome!  My thanks to Drew for his musical guidance in orchestration, and to my neighbor Dr. Daniel Barr for the books and resource information he provided!

Additionally, I recently received a recording of Pirates!, a multi-movement work that will be available from FJH in the Summer of 2009.  The recording is from the Nassau Division 4 Honor Band that Drew conducted back in January.  If you get the chance, click here to here this group of freshmen and sophomores swashbuckling away!  The students did a wonderful job under Drew’s conducting.  My thanks to Drew and the Directors who programmed this piece for their festival!