Celebration and Song

If you were trying to explain the meaning of Commencement to an alien from another planet, you could do a pretty good job of it just by showing him or her the titles of the pieces we're working on this month. From Pomp and Circumstance, Tribute and Triumph, Commemoration, Celebration and Song, and The Incredibles, we get the impression of a formal ritual to honour effort and accomplishment. (Of course, you'd want to explain to the alien that along with celebratory music, the best formal rituals always involve delicious food.)

Over the next few posts, we'll look at some of these rousing pieces we're working on for Commencement. Many thanks to Heather in the flute section for scouting out some videos!

Celebration and Song was composed by Robert Sheldon. A former public school music teacher and university music instructor, he is Concert Band Editor for Alfred Music Publishing. Celebration and Song was commissioned for the Hillsdale High School Wind Ensemble in Ohio.

Here's a high school band performing the piece.



Here's the link to the video, for email readers.

After hearing the version of Celebration and Song in this next video, I did some research on the group of performers. They have a webpage, which is written in Slovenian. Google Translate seemed to tell me that they are a long-standing community band, made up of young people and older people. I think they're pretty impressive (if you like this one, check out their version of Pirates of the Caribbean). What do you think?