By Parker Thomas Staff writer
Imani Winds visited Susquehanna on March 20 and 21 as the last guests of the Martha Baker Blessing Musicians-in-Residence Series for this academic year. The group held several master classes for the students of the music department and held a concert on March 21 in Stretansky Concert Hall.
Imani Winds is one of the most well-renowned wind quintets in the United States. The group continues traditional wind quintet repertoire, while also adding new compositions that draw from American, African, Latin America and European influences. These new compositions and arrangements come from both the group’s members, Jeff Scott and Valerie Coleman, and commissions written by established and emerging composers, such as Wayne Shorter, Jason Moran and Paquito D’Rivera.
The group regularly participates in residencies to further the educations of undergraduate and graduate students. Additionally, they have produced five albums by E1 Music, including “The Classical Underground,” their debut album that was nominated for a Grammy in 2006.
Imani Winds is composed of flutist Valerie Coleman, oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, clarinetist Mark Dover, French hornist Jeff Scott and bassoonist Monica Ellis. Imani Winds, the brainchild of Coleman, was founded in 1997. During that year, the original group of players obtained their master’s degrees from several schools located in the New York City vicinity, including the Julliard School, Manhattan School of Music and the State University of New York. After becoming a freelance artist, Coleman recognized the commonality of being a flutist in the professional world and decided to set herself apart by creating a wind quintet.
“She said that as a composer, a flute player and as an African American woman there could be some interesting things that she could be doing with her career and with her life in music, not wait for those opportunities to come to her,” Ellis explained at a forum provided for the students. “So she set out to put together a wind quintet… She particularly wanted that group to be made up of musicians of color to see if the interpretation of standard repertoire and her own repertoire would live itself to a similar result.”
Through connections, Coleman obtained all the members of the quintet and they began to practice in the summer of 1997. The group originally did concert series and freelance work and eventually expanded into competitions to further advance their group sound. In 2001, Imani Winds won the Concert Artists Guild International Competition, held in Carnegie Hall. Their win provided them with a manager as well as propelled their career as a group to the standard of professionalism they have kept for the last 16 years.
In 2015, the group’s original clarinetist, Mariam Adam, left the group to live abroad in Europe. The group held auditions, during which Dover rose to the top, and she has since been a part of the group.
On March 20 and 21 the quintet held eight master classes for students of the music department and a forum on March 21 in Stretansky Hall. There, students were provided with the group’s history and issues that the artists came across as freelance musicians. Students asked for advice from Imani Winds, with several questions on what to do as they approach graduation and what to do in the professional world to promote oneself.
That evening, Imani Winds performed for the public five pieces of music, which included traditional and modern classical pieces, jazz and Middle Eastern influenced music. The group started off with “Dance Mediterranea,” a piece that came from a collaboration with musician Simon Shaheen. The song played at the concert was a rendition arranged by Scott.
“Very often we will do collaborations and want to be able to bring the music on tour just as a quintet, and that piece is so exciting that I just condensed it from the original version to just the quintet,” Scott said.
Following this, the quintet played the traditional “Prelude, Theme and Variations” from Quintet for Winds, Opus 43 by Carl Nielsen, followed by a rendition of the first four parts of “The Planets” by Gustav Holst. The piece was arranged by Jonathan Russell particularly for Imani Winds to commemorate this year’s 100th anniversary of the composition.
Discussing such arrangements of famous pieces, Spellman-Diaz stated that Imani Winds enjoys doing “large scale, crazy-big orchestral things and shrink them down to their smallest, most interesting elements.”
“I think sometimes music… is fun to hear it in different aspects and the great, great works will hopefully stand up by themselves even if it is condensed down to just a small amount of people,” Spellman-Diaz continued.
After an intermission, the concert continued with a jazz piece by Wayne Shorter composed specifically for Imani Winds entitled “Terra Incognita,” followed by the final piece of the evening, “Quintet No. 2” by Miguel Del Aguila, a programmatic narrative told through music.
