Get a 20% discount when purchasing to four or more Music Department events sold through the Cal Poly Ticket Office. Cal Poly faculty and staff receive 20% discount for any Music Department event sold through the ticket office. Prices are inclusive of all fees.
Cal Poly Bandfest: The Fast and the Furious!
Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024
3 p.m., Performing Arts Center
Titled “The Fast and the Furious,” the concert will feature the Mustang Marching Band, Wind Ensemble and Wind Orchestra in an energetic season opener!
“The Fast and the Furious” title is inspired by composer John Mackey’s hair raising “Redline Tango” that the Wind Ensemble will play. It was the composer’s first work for concert band, written in 2004. It depicts the experience of redlining an engine, or pushing it to the limit. The Wind Ensemble will also play “Slava” by Leonard Bernstein, and “Four Scottish Dances” by Malcolm Arnold.
The Wind Orchestra’s set will include “Honey Boys on Parade” by Edward Victor Cupero, which recalls the dazzling circus marches of the 1910s; “Wicklow” by Laura Estes; “Courtly Airs and Dances” by Ron Nelson; and “Holiday Piece” by David Foster, a rousing setting of the popular “Ukrainian Bell Carol” for modern concert band.
The 220-member Mustang Band will close the concert with arrangements of popular music including Snarky Puppy’s “Tio Macaco,” Bob Dylan's “All Along the Watchtower,” ABBA’s “Mamma Mia,” and “Dancing Through Life” from the Broadway hit “Wicked,” as well as Cal Poly school songs that the group is performing for Cal Poly Athletics events.
The concert will be conducted by Director of Bands Christopher J. Woodruff and Associate Director of Bands Nicholas P. Waldron.
Tickets ($17 and $22 general, $12 students)
Cal Poly Wind Bands Winter Concert: Visions
Sunday, March 9, 2025
3 p.m., Performing Arts Center
Cal Poly Bands will explore the vastness of subconscious and of reality through musical works. The program will include Donald Grantham’s spooky “Baron Cimetiere's Mambo” and Daniel Bukvich’s “In Memoriam – Dresden 1945.” The Wind Orchestra Chamber Musicians will perform a new work by Peter Meechan, “James Webb’s Pillars,” inspired by NASA’s photography of an interstellar stellar nursery called “The Pillars of Creation.”
Tickets ($17 and $22 general, $12 students)
Cal Poly Wind Bands Spring Concert: Edifice
Sunday, June 8, 2024
3 p.m., Performing Arts Center
The Wind Orchestra and Wind Ensemble present a program that celebrates the art and craft of architecture, a discipline many of the bands’ students pursue at Cal Poly. Works programmed for this concert include “Dreams of an Architect” by Joshua Idio and “Angels in the Architecture” by Frank Ticheli.
Tickets ($17 and $22 general, $12 students)