The Omnibus

Issue date: 3/9/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Danielle Pollock Freshmen Liz Stevens, Deanna Talley, Danielle Coleman and Jana Green enjoy a meal on the Symphonic Winds tour. The Winds performed at Missouri churches and schools.

Two days after the collaborative performance with the Bolivar High School Band to a nearly full house audience in Pike Auditorium, Southwest Baptist University's Symphonic Winds embarked on a two-day tour Thursday and Friday, March 1-2.
The band made three stops on their tour. Thursday evening the group performed at Clinton High School, and on Friday the group performed at Odessa High School and First Baptist Church in Oak Grove.
"[My favorite performance was] Odessa High School because we got to perform for a variety of students," said [YEAR] Stephen Cowden. "We performed for the band, some middle schoolers and some community members."
Symphonic Winds performed music from their Tuesday, Feb. 27 concert "A Potpourri of Wind Music" as well as music they performed in Chapel Wednesday, Feb. 14.
While touring is good performance experience, its main purpose is recruiting.
"The purpose of touring is to promote SBU and the music department to secondary schools and churches through the presentation of high quality performances that will attract students to our university," said Dr. Brian Hopwood, director of Instrumental Studies and Symphonic Winds conductor.
"Our students also benefit educationally," said Hopwood. "They are given the opportunity to perform for different audiences in different locations, they work with local hosts in arranging the logistics of each performance and have opportunities to interact with students and adults by sharing information about SBU and about themselves."
Though the tour went well, it is not quite the tour Hopwood and the students were expecting to participate in.
"Originally, the plan was to take both the winds and orchestra to the Kansas City area," said Hopwood.
Hopwood arranged performances for both groups to perform separately at different locations Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but many performances were canceled due to many schools making up missed activities due to the ice storm.
"I soon realized that it was going to be difficult to re-schedule a full slate (four days) for both groups and decided to condense the tour and focus on the winds because their Thursday and Friday events remained essentially intact," said Hopwood.
Hopwood hopes to travel with the orchestra this semester, but it will likely only be a one-day excursion.
Symphonic Winds' next concert will be Tuesday, April 10 in Pike Auditorium.

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