Shades of Red, mellophone concerto by Ryan Williams | Yale Concert Band, Kate Warren - soloist

Kate Warren performs Ryan Williams' mellophone concerto Shades of Red with the Yale Concert Band. Live performance recorded on February 10th, 2023 in Woolsey Auditorium.

I. Origin Story (0:00)
II. Cadenza (4:09)
III. The Omnipresent Future (5:30)

Shades of Red was written for SFC Selena Maytum of the US Army Field Band.

From the composer:
"The first movement grew out of the warm, rich horn calls from the beginning of Jean Sibelius’s 5th Symphony. With the work highlighting the mellophone, I felt it was only appropriate to begin the work with a statement of the mellophone’s lineage in the instrument storage room, and the typical path mellophone players take to get to that horn. Thus, the beginning of the concerto begins with a simple horn call motive, shared between the soloist and the horn section.

The third movement draws some inspiration from Philip Glass’s “Heroes” Symphony. Both Selena and I have a love for minimalism and post-minimalism, and after a warm afternoon listening to the Glass Symphony with the windows down, I decided to take a crack at the movement by building it on a post-minimal foundation. The movement really unfolded quickly and took its current shape as a Rondo.

Throughout the work, there’s a quasi-serial treatment of a cell that might be described as (0257) - or simply, Bb-C-Eb-F. This cell becomes the basis for both melodic, harmonic, and formal material."

Read more and purchase the score:
https://www.ryanjwilliams.net/store/p...