“Starry Night” by Jenni Brandon performed, by Joanna McCoskey on Friday, November 20, 2020 at 4:00 PM PST. This is an online Zoom performance (https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81950869567?pwd=VER6VDgrSk1uMkhBaGdPMnM3YkM4QT09 Zoom passcode: 754911). She is a conductor at Greensboro and Winston Salem New Horizons Bands. Joanna is also a Clarinet Instructor at Community Music School of UNC School of the Arts.
Joanna is a Doctor of Musical Arts student at UNC Greensboro studying clarinet performance at UNC Greensboro College of Visual and Performing Arts. She currently resides in Winston-Salem, NC and is the clarinet teacher at the UNCSA Community Music School and at Upbeat Music Company in Lewisville, along with maintaining her own private studio. She has taught privately for 10 years, and has taught in New York, Delaware, and North Carolina, with her students regularly placing in top honors ensembles. She is a freelancer in the Winston-Salem area, and has performed with the Piedmont Wind Symphony, Piedmont Wind Symphony Clarinet Ensemble, Salem Band as a section first-clarinetist and Eb-clarinetist, and the Salem Saxophone Quartet as a tenor saxophonist. At UNCG, she has been part of the Wind Ensemble and the Avid Reeders Clarinet Quartet. She has given masterclasses to middle school students in schools throughout the Winston-Salem/Greensboro regions. In addition, she serves as the conductor of the Gate City and Winston-Salem New Horizons Bands, an international organization that creates music-making opportunities for retired adults.
Her program for November 20, 2020 at 4:00 PM PST, is an online Zoom performance and includes:
Starry Night for solo B-flat clarinet by Jenni Brandon
Karibu by Regina Harris Baiocchi
Distant Light by Amy Dunker
D(i)agon(als) by Augusta Read Thomas
Nocturne by Freya Waley-Cohen
Starry Night is a three-movement work for solo B-flat clarinet that tells of the night skies and our fascination with what lies in them. Using poetry and texts from Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Keats, and Van Gogh (whose painting is also the inspiration for the title of this work), these movements tell of the stars as “fire-folk” and how the sight of stars can make us dream.
This work was written for Virginia Costa Figueiredo, premiered in February 2013, and receives its premiere recording on her CD
The movements are:
- The Starlight Night
Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
- Bright Star!
Bright Star! Would I were steadfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendor hang aloft the night!
John Keats (1795-1821)
III. The Sight of Stars
For my part I know nothing with any certainty,
but the sight of stars makes me dream.
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Starry Night for solo B-flat clarinet (solo B-flat clarinet sheet music) is available at Jennibrandon.com