Music by Frank Erickson

Greetings!

For some odd reason I recently had the craving to listen to the music of Frank Erickson.

Frank Erickson was an important composer and arranger for wind band after World War II. He also did some pedagogical work, including arranging music for the "First Division Band Method" and writing his own band course. I won't go into great detail about his bio, but if you're interested you can find some information on windrep.org. All that I'll really say is that he wrote some gorgeous music. Several of his prominent works are slow and lyrical. He has an exceptional ability to write beautiful, moving lines, and this has caused band directors for decades to use that music to help teach musicianship to their players.

This is how I was introduced to him. One of the pieces on today's line up, "Air for Band", was used as our warm up chorale. We would work on this just like it was on our UIL program (which one of my other mentors advocates as well with any warm up chorale). It's longer than a Bach chorale, or most warm up chorales, so we'd only play through a section of it in a given day. But what was great about it was that every part had moving lines at some point, so in addition to working on ensemble sound (and man, can Erickson write colorful chords!), we could work on phrase shaping, rubato (which also meant working on watching the conductor), and so on. That music came to mean a lot to us, because we used it every year. It symbolized our entire high school experience, and so fittingly, one of the last high school band experiences I had was standing in a line in front of the bands with my graduating class while the Honor Band performed the piece without us during the Spring concert. Emotional stuff!

I've always kept that piece close to my heart, and while I'd heard of other pieces, I'd never actually listened to them. So when I said I had a strange craving to listen to Erickson's music, explore would probably have been the better word. I tried to share some of the better quality videos I found on YouTube. I wanted to do this not only because it was what I was into today, but also because I don't hear of Erickson's music being played as much as I think it maybe should be. There are plenty of grade 1 and 2 works for small school bands, but instead they seem to go with newer "educational" music. Well, friends, please give Erickson a more thorough listen (There is a grade 4 in here as well!), and I hope you'll consider programming him for your band at some point next year.

Enjoy!

"Toccata for Band"

(PML Grade 3)


"Balladair"
(PML Grade 2)


If you enjoyed this one, you'd really like "Lyric Episode". It sounds very similar, but is a little more complex. If you attended the 2011 TMEA clinic "Achieving Success in a Small or Disadvantaged Band Program" featuring the Cobre High School Band from Bayard, New Mexico, then you heard excerpts from that one. I prefer it over "Balladair", however it is not on the PML. You might also like "Aria Cantabile", which is on the PML Grade 2.


"Sonatina"

"Air for Band"
(PML Grade 1)
The main staple from Erickson, and the best of his slow, lyrical works. One of my mentors warned me that this is a hard grade 1, due to intonation and musicality. I'm sure he's right in the context of small school or young bands, but I can tell you that students love playing this. Students have even posted fan videos playing their parts on YouTube. Enjoy!

"Overture Jubiloso"
This is performed a bit faster than most other recordings I found, including the one on JW Pepper, but that's no surprise considering the group. I can't believe this isn't on the PML. JW Pepper lists it as "Medium". If you're not sure you've heard this, you may recognize it from marching shows. Enjoy!

I hope you enjoyed this look at Frank Erickson. It is by no means extensive! He eventually wrote symphonies, but he mostly wrote for developing bands. When you start programming for your young or small school band next year, I encourage you to search "Erickson" and see what pops up, even if it's not for UIL. Thanks for listening/reading, and until next time, take care!

Musically yours,

Mr. Cooper