Superior Wind Symphony Archives | Visual and Performing Arts News

Mike Christianson and Students to Share Band Experiences

Published October 21, 2022

Undergraduates

What are you doing this Monday night 10/24 at 6 ET? Grab a bite with Mike Christianson, Associate Professor, Visual and Performing Arts and Director of Bands at Michigan Tech. Joining in will be two members of the Huskies Pep Band and Superior Wind Symphony, Matt Bettwy (mechanical engineering) and Laura Bufanda (theatre and entertainment technology), both who will be graduating with their bachelor’s degrees in December. They are the featured guests on Husky Bites, Tech’s free, interactive webinar series. Learn something new in just 30 minutes or so, with time after for Q&A! Get the full scoop and register at mtu.edu/huskybites.

Read more about Mike, Laura, Matt and Husky Bites on the College of Engineering blog.

Image of Mike Christianson with his trombone

Image of Matt Bettwy conducting the Michigan Tech Huskies Pep Band

Image of Laura Bufanda, Superior Wind Symphony Performer

Image of Superior Wind Symphony performing outdoors on the Walker Lawn

Music-O-Rama Saturday at Rozsa Center

Published October 3, 2019

By Tanya Maki

Announcements

Join us for Music-O-Rama, an annual musical variety concert, celebrating the diversity, history and variety of music at Michigan Tech. Performers from many of the major Michigan Tech music ensembles such as Jazz Lab Band, Superior Wind Symphony, conScience: Michigan Tech Chamber Singers and the Michigan Tech Concert Choir; will appear throughout the hall, playing music from around the globe.

Music-O-Rama will be presented by the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, (Oct. 5) at the Rozsa Center. The concert is an annual crowd favorite. Come and listen to new music composed by Tech students as well as performances by Tech students and community members.

Tickets are on sale now, $13 for adults, $5 for youth, and no charge for Michigan Tech students with the Experience Tech fee. Tickets are available by phone at 487-2073, online at mtu.edu/rozsa, in person at the Central Ticketing Office in the Student Development Complex, or the night of the show at the Rozsa Box Office, which opens two hours prior to performances.

Superior Wind Symphony Presents Free Outdoor Concert

Published September 21, 2018

By Heather Powers

Bring your lawn chairs, bring your blankets. The Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts and Department of Visual and Performing Arts presents a concert by the Superior Wind Symphony (SWS), titled “Europe, America and the World,” a celebration of the music of WWI era band leader from Harlem, James Reese Europe.

The SWS will perform a free outdoor concert at 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 28 on Walker Lawn.

If it rains, the concert will be held inside the McArdle Theatre, second floor of Walker Arts and Humanities Center.

Superior Wind Symphony Celebrates Contemporary Composers

Published April 20, 2018

By Heather Powers

The Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts and Department of Visual and Performing Arts present a concert by the Superior Wind Symphony and Campus Concert Band under the direction of Mike Christianson (VPA).

The concert, “Right Now,” is a celebration of music written by contemporary composers. The concert is at 7:30 p.m. Saturday (April 21) in the Rozsa Center.

The Superior Wind Symphony and Campus Concert Band once again combine for their year-end wind concert, ‘Right Now,’ the music of living composers. These 14 composers are people who walk among us and who you could conceivably meet. Join us for a fresh and invigorating evening. Two have been on this campus, two are jazz bassists and they range in age from 33 to 94.

I have met five of them and performed with two of them. They write in a wide range of styles, so there is bound to be something you will love. The composers include John Mackey, Shelley Hanson, Chris Brubeck, Eric Whitacre, Michael Daugherty, Fred Hersch, Rufus Reid, Esperanza Spalding, Radiohead, Bjork, Andrew Boysen, Jr., Tan Dun and Sammy Nestico. – Mike Christianson

Tickets for “Right Now” are on sale now, $13 for adults, $5 for youth, and no charge for Michigan Tech students with the Experience Tech fee. Tickets are available by phone at 87-2073, online, in person at the Central Ticketing Office in the Student Development Complex or at the Rozsa Box Office the evening of the performance.

Note the Rozsa Box Office only opens two hours prior to performances.

Can’t make the performance? You can listen via our live-streaming!

Yearning to Breathe Free: Free Outdoor Band Concert on the Rozsa Lawn

Published September 15, 2017

By

Announcements

Bring your lawn chairs, bring your blankets: The Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts is proud to present “Yearning to Breathe Free,” a free outdoor concert put on by Michael Christianson, Michigan Tech’s Director of Bands, with performances by the Superior Wind Symphony, in which they will celebrate the music of great composers who emigrated to the United States. Come spend a beautiful fall evening full of band music on Sunday, September 24^th, 7:00 PM, on the Rozsa/Walker lawn. If it rains, the show will be inside, in the Rozsa Center.

According to Christainson, “Many of the great composers of iconic American band music came to the United States from overseas. They were drawn by the words of Emma Lazarus, inscribed in 1883 on the base of the Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

We will perform mostly original works for winds by great composers who were immigrants to the US: Irving Berlin, Antonin Dvorak, Sergei Prokofiev, Darius Milhaud, Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky, Percy Grainger, Chen Yi, Tania Leon , plus a Sousa march dedicated to his overseas friends! Bring your blanket, your dinner, and spread out on the lawn as you enjoy a classic Band moment with Michigan Tech’s Superior Wind Symphony! Concert starts at 7:00PM, sunset starts at 8:01.”

For more information please visit us online at mtu.edu/rozsa

Grammy Winner Jerry Blackstone To Conduct Honors Choir Festival

Published October 6, 2016

By Heather Powers

Announcements

The Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts and the department of visual and performing arts (VPA) presents “Honors Choir Festival” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 8 in the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts.

The concert contemplates the forces of nature and weather in its many forms; springtime, a thunderstorm, a prairie fire and the Schoolchildren’s Blizzard of 1888.

The Choirs of Michigan Tech and the Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra welcome singers from Northern Michigan University and upper peninsula high schools to perform Ēriks Ešenvalds’ “Whispers on the Prairie Wind,” under the direction of Jerry Blackstone, the Grammy Award winning director of choral activities at the University of Michigan. The KSO will also present Beethoven’s Symphony no.6 in F Major (Pastoral), conducted by Jared Anderson.

By Bethany Jones

Music O Rama: Celebrating John and Biruta Lowther

Published September 29, 2016

By Heather Powers

The Department of Visual and Performing Arts presents “Music O Rama” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday (Oct. 1) at the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts.

“Music O Rama,” an annual musical variety concert, will be held this year in honor of a couple that has spent many years participating in the Arts at Michigan Tech. This concert is sponsored by John and Biruta Lowther, in celebration of their 50th wedding anniversary. The Lowthers and their family took part in many of Michigan Tech’s various music ensembles.

The celebration will feature performances by conScience, Superior Wind Symphony and Jazz Lab Band. According to John Lowther, “We wanted to celebrate our 50th anniversary and express our appreciation to the music department for the years of music our family has enjoyed. I played in the Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra for a number of years. Our son played in the Pep Band and sang in the Concert Choir. Biruta and I enjoyed singing together in the Concert Choir.”

Tickets are on sale now, $13 for adults, $5 for youth, and no charge for Michigan Tech students with the Experience Tech fee. Tickets are available by phone at 7-2073, online, in person at the Central Ticketing Office in the Student Development Complex or at the Calumet Theatre Box Office.

by Bethany Jones

Free Outdoor Concert on Rozsa Lawn

Published September 8, 2016

By Heather Powers

Bring your lawn chairs, bring your blankets as the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts presents “An Old Fashioned Twilight Concert,” 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 18 on the Rozsa/Walker lawn.

The free outdoor concert is put on by Michael Christianson, Michigan Tech’s director of bands, with a performance by the Superior Wind Symphony, in which they will celebrate the birthday of the godfather of band concerts, John Philip Sousa.

Spend a beautiful fall evening full of band music outdoors on the lawn. In the event of rain, the show will move inside, to the McArdle Theatre on the second floor of the Walker Center.

Christianson says, “at the zenith of the wind band’s popularity, crowds would flock to the park to hear the great John Philip Sousa play a mixture of marches, folk songs, popular music of recent times, masterworks and featured soloists from within the band….outdoors.”

Christianson says the concern, held one week before Sousa’s birthday, will reference music of that golden era, (Sousa, Holst, Kreisler) but will also update some items (John Williams, Frank Ticheli, Hoagy Carmichael) to be more pertinent today.

“Bring your blanket, your dinner and spread out on the lawn as you enjoy a classic Band moment with Michigan Tech’s Superior Wind Symphony,” he says.

More information is available online.

Tag: Superior Wind Symphony