Randol Bass, the composer, has achieved an impressive array of performances and commissions by prestigious ensembles throughout the United States.!
This narrative setting of Lincoln's immortal "Gettysburg Address" was commissioned by the United States "President's Own" Marine Band in early 2009.
Program Notes
A Feast of Carols
Randol Alan Bass is a Texan by birth and present attachment, although he earned an M.M. from the University of Cincinnati Conservatory, and completed part of his doctorate at Ohio State.
He has founded and conducted several wind and choral groups at various times in his career, and his compositions and arrangements have been performed by well-respected groups in such venues as Tanglewood, Carnegie Hall, and the symphony centers of Boston and Dallas.
A Feast of Carols, published in 1985, is an arrangement of six well-known Christmastide songs, beginning with the Gloucestershire Wassail—one of several English lays celebrating the drink of that name and the seasonal custom of going house-to-house seeking conviviality.
This is followed by the French carol, Il Est Ne (He Is Born). Interestingly, this carol—which also appears in the Honegger work on tonight’s program—begins in French, then repeats in English; the translation here stays quite clos