The annual spring show of our Concert Band and Symphony Band this year honors the memory of another local musician.

Set for 7:30 p.m. tonight at the Wattenbarger Auditorium, the Symphony Band program memorializes Herman Godes, who died on Feb. 3. He was the husband of piano professor Catherine Godes.

Dedicated to Godes’ memory will be the performance of Francis McBeth’s "Kaddish," a mournful and dramatic composition that portrays the Jewish prayer for the dead. It is a representation of the prayer that, in the Jewish faith, is said daily by the bereaved for 11 months and then each year thereafter on the anniversary of the loved one’s death.

“Herman was a sensitive and consummate musician who is missed each and every day by this TTU music family,” says Joseph Hermann, our Director of Bands, who will conduct the Symphony Band performance. “His life as a warm, engaging figure and a magnificent teacher is celebrated with this musical prayer.”

Other works that will be included in the Symphony Band portion of the program will feature student soloists.

Kyle Huron, a senior music education major from Texas, will be featured on Concerto No. 2 for Solo Tuba, Wind and Percussion, composed by Leroy Osmon, who is also a native Texan. It’s a salute to tuba professor R. Winston Morris in his 40th year of teaching here.

Four students — Jonathan Holland, Jayce Clemons, Matt Tidwell and Joe Frank Williams — will be featured on a performance of David Gillingham’s "Concertino for Four Percussion and Wind Ensemble."

“This piece is a kaleidoscope of colors and a vivid journey that begins as a mysterious, breath-halting introduction and ends as a breath-taking and exciting conclusion,” says Hermann.

The show opens with the Concert Band’s program, which includes historic literature for the wind band.

Under the direction of Eric Harris, Associate Director of Bands, the Concert Band will perform Francois Joseph Gossec’s "Military Symphony," which was written soon after the beginning of the French Revolution in 1790.

“Originally written for the Band of the French National Guard and the Paris Conservatory, the three-movement work has a beautiful, classic design with contrasting sections and a use of the instrumentation as a means to create contrast,” Harris says.

The Concert Band will also present "Salvation is Created," a rich wind setting of the Russian chorale by Tchesnekof; "Immovable Do," a beautiful and complex Grainger composition; and "Pageant," a standard of the band’s repertoire by American composer Vincent Persichetti.

Admission is free, and the show is open to the public. For more information, call the Band Office at 3165.