MACKEY The Frozen Cathedral - "The President's Own" U.S. Marine Band

"The President's Own" United States Marine Band performs John Mackey's "The Frozen Cathedral" on Sunday, Feb. 28, 2016, at the Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center in Alexandria, Va. Conducted by Major Michelle A. Rakers.
www.marineband.marines.mil/
Full Program and notes: www.marineband.marines.mil/Por...

[@JohnMackey]

Wow. Just... wow.

[@usmarineband]

+John Mackey We're going to take this live tomorrow for #MusicMonday. Keep an eye out!

[@OrkiestraWieniawa]

Awesome! now we can only commend the Foundry, but in the future ... :)

[@Chito1ish]

Right? u did a fantastic job Mr. Mackey! So did the marine band!!

[@jslasher1]

I am certainly inclined as a fellow composer to agree with Mr Mackey.

[@betaomega04]

Thank you for your contributions to our art.

[@sambitious]

Okay can we give some credit to the tambourine player? He absolutely killed it.

[@brianscotpatterson2101]

Thank you to the one man in the video who gave that performance an immediate standing ovation. Thank you to Major Raker's conductive leadership - I'm enthralled every time I watch this, and it makes me really happy to be American. Also, lady who took your son out (to presumably go pee), you're a braver woman than I (and it didn't disrupt my love for the U.S Marine Band's performance).

[@cowapocalypse75]

THIS

[@jabrown1978]

1. Their brass section literally kills me. 2. Go the eff AWF tambourine and triangle players! 3. This piece never fails to make me sob like a baby, especially when you know the story behind its commission, and the trombones come roaring though triumphantly towards the end and the entire ensemble is singing and almost yearning....I mean it is a masterpiece of the contemporary wind ensemble canon in my humble opinion. Love you guys, and love the composer.

[@92vanguard]

I agree. I performed this last year on 1st Cornet with Colorado Wind Ensemble mere days before the country locked down for COVID. The Director at CWE was a Trombone player in the ensemble that premiered the piece. He relayed to us the story behind its commission. I was destroyed after both of our public performances of it. Sheer exhaustion from the emotion injected into the performance. Cried on stage after the last performance. I was exhausted and exhilarated at the same time. My ONLY issue with this performance is I felt the last 2 measures of ritardando should have been WAY more exaggerated. The penultimate chord should have been longer. Build that tension drastically and then nail us between the eyes with the resolution and then hang on like its Santa Clara Vanguard's final chord from 2018. Make our eyes bleed in the glory.

[@abbyzombek9504]

John Mackey never disappoints...

[@cowapocalypse75]

real

[@jazzbob57]

Nice to see a female conductor. I know there are more than I think, but it is good. Very well done, Maj. Rakers!

[@josephcarlbreil5380]

Ms Rakers is a fine conductor. Appreciate her broad 'swath' conducting style.

[@raymoland]

I agree, there is no ambiguity whatsoever. She is a players conductor.

[@leonardtrebors8808]

12:36 that e flat clarinet trill really needed to be screaming appearantly lol! Great performance!

[@quentinm.williams9]

The woodwind runs are so in sync. I love it.

[@alexstevensen4292]

Hey a classical performance that's mike'd and mixed properly incredible

[@quentinm.williams9]

Getting emotional listening to this. This was supposed to be our final piece my high school was going to perform for our 2020 state concert evaluation but this sadly got postponed due to COVID. Also, it was my senior year as well. Beautiful piece.

[@usmarineband]

Sorry to hear this Quentin, but glad you enjoyed this performance. Hopefully musically is not far from your life.

[@gogovespa2012]

This is one of my favorite pieces. Thank you John Mackey! And yes, Wow!

[@andrewbowman2885]

Playing as principle euphonium for my university’s symphonic wind ensemble, and we’re performing this tonight. This song is absolutely wonderful and I aspire to perform the piece half as beautifully as our phenomenal military band performed it. God bless america

[@jslasher1]

Why do you refer to this instrumental work as a 'song'? Are you a captive of inaccurate iTunes terminology?

[@vimto3071]

@@jslasher1 why must you get caught up in semantics? You also appear to have done so in a pretentious manner.

[@jslasher1]

@@vimto3071 Your comment is not relevant, so I am going to block you in order to avoid any further argy-bargy from you.

[@graemelimbert351]

As usual,wonderful playing

[@wideone23]

Simply amazing. Beautiful music beautifully performed.

[@Clarinaddict]

The alto flute sounds amazing 😍 the wind ensemble I'm in at University of Maryland recently performed this piece, and the conductor (Dr. Andrea Brown) was in the premier of this piece after her conductor commissioned it. This was perfect for the story behind it. We were all in tears performing this. Thank you Mr. Mackey for sharing your beautiful music with everyone!

[@mahadevanseetharaman5336]

I believe it's a bass flute, actually. www.ostimusic.com/pdf/FrozenCathedral-locked.pdf

[@sethbingo]

This gives me chills every time I listen to it.

[@josephcarlbreil5380]

A superb piece, one in need of more performances.

[@cowapocalypse75]

I AM DEVASTATED. THANK YOU Maj. Rakers and US Marine Band!!

[@coloraturaElise]

Wonderful performance....thank you all!

[@GeorgesGondard]

Magnificent !!!!

[@travisbranaman7156]

Wow!!!!

[@christianreis7091]

Magnifica interpretação, Bravo Tutti

[@SuperLovelybear]

Shoutout to the Lamar Cons Band... yah dig

[@tristanmoreno2346]

amazing and expressive conductor!!! A TRUE QUEEN.

[@ftfo]

Does President Obama ever attend these concerts?

[@classicalytrumpet9190]

The band preforms at White House events and parties sometimes.

[@meredithmunger783]

So great as usual and amazing to have a female conductor as well.

[@tornadopain4624]

1:12

[@tornadopain4624]

7:44

[@ahmedfalahi5532]

Anyone from MS band

[@theosmith1182]

Anyone notice how 2:25 sounds like the moment when Thanos tosses Gamora over the cliff on Vormir to get the soul stone?

[@guzepppi]

❤ 🇲🇹❤☘XIXXA

[@ilikedogs6425]

4:21

[@chandananimalsepala7825]

War🎼🎧🎼War

[@seanwidmer4017]

Unbelievable.

[@johnk.blanchard503]

So what was the inspiration for this piece? It is lovely, but I'm so tired of contemporary composers attaching arbitrary titles to pieces or not explaining their creative process...

[@hipeople9856]

"The other challenge was connecting the piece to Alaska - a place I’d never seen in person. I kept thinking about all of this in literal terms, and I just wasn’t getting anywhere. My wife, who titles all of my pieces, said I should focus on what it is that draws people to these places. People go to the mountains - these monumental, remote, ethereal, and awesome parts of the world - as a kind of pilgrimage. It’s a search for the sublime, for transcendence. A great mountain is like a church. “Call it The Frozen Cathedral,” she said. I clearly married up. The most immediately distinct aural feature of the work is the quality (and geographic location) of intriguing instrumental colors. The stark, glacial opening is colored almost exclusively by a crystalline twinkling of metallic percussion that surrounds the audience. Although the percussion orchestration carries a number of traditional sounds, there are a host of unconventional timbres as well, such as crystal glasses, crotales on timpani, tam-tam resonated with superball mallets, and the waterphone, an instrument used by Mackey to great effect on his earlier work Turning. The initial sonic environment is an icy and alien one, a cold and distant landscape whose mystery is only heightened by a longing, modal solo for bass flute - made dissonant by a contrasting key, and more insistent by the eventual addition of alto flute, English horn, and bassoon. This collection expands to encompass more of the winds, slowly and surely, with their chorale building in intensity and rage. Just as it seems their wailing despair can drive no further, however, it shatters like glass, dissipating once again into the timbres of the introductory percussion. The second half of the piece begins in a manner that sounds remarkably similar to the first. In reality, it has been transposed into a new key and this time, when the bass flute takes up the long solo again, it resonates with far more compatible consonance. The only momentary clash is a Lydian influence in the melody, which brings a brightness to the tune that will remain until the end. Now, instead of anger and bitter conflict, the melody projects an aura of warmth, nostalgia, and even joy. This bright spirit pervades the ensemble, and the twinkling colors of the metallic percussion inspire a similar percolation through the upper woodwinds as the remaining winds and brass present various fragmented motives based on the bass flute’s melody. This new chorale, led in particular by the trombones, is a statement of catharsis, at once banishing the earlier darkness in a moment of spiritual transcendence and celebrating the grandeur of the surroundings. A triumphant conclusion in E-flat major is made all the more jubilant by the ecstatic clattering of the antiphonal percussion, which ring into the silence like voices across the ice." Source: www.marineband.marines.mil/Portals/175/Docs/Programs/170310.pdf%3Fver%3D2017-02-28-152904-050 Pages 13 and 14 Not really an arbitrary title. You just have to look it up sometimes. I think that this explained it pretty well.

[@92vanguard]

@@hipeople9856 You forgot the most important part regarding WHO the piece was dedicated to when commissioned which informs WHY Denali and Alaska were the inspiration. "The piece was born of the collaboration between Mackey and John Locke, Director of Bands at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Locke asked Mackey if he would dedicate the piece to the memory of his late son, J.P., who had a particular fascination with Alaska and the scenery of Denali National Park. Mackey agreed-and immediately found himself grappling with two problems. "How does one write a concert closer, making it joyous and exciting and celebratory, while also acknowledging, at least to myself, that this piece is rooted in unimaginable loss: The death of a child?"

[@bobmatt5175]

Why would you complain about such a thing without taking 5 seconds to google it? So lazy and ignorant