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ABOUT THE COMPOSER
Carl Schroeder
of Minneapolis, Minnesota, composes music for concert band, orchestra, choir,
chamber ensembles and solo piano that often draws inspiration from American history,
current events, natural surroundings and memories. His large ensemble music has
been performed by more than 40 concert bands, orchestras and choirs, including
the Air Force Band of Mid-America, Minnesota Youth Symphonies and Chamber Choir
Kyiv. He has written works on commissions from the Minnesota Symphonic Winds,
Minnesota State Band, Cornell University Symphonic Band, Southwest Wind
Ensemble, Calhoun-Isles Community Band, Wells Fargo Chorus and other ensembles
and individuals. His music is featured on five CD recordings, his choral
work Two December Carols is published by Boosey & Hawkes, and his
concert band work Spin is published by C. Alan Publications.
Schroeder is a 2005
graduate of St. Olaf College in
Northfield, Minnesota, where he studied composition primarily
with Timothy Mahr and Peter Hamlin. In 2001, he was
named "Composer with Most Potential" by the Minnesota Music Educators
Association, and in 2004 he was one of three under-25 American composers
chosen to participate in the National Band Association’s Young Composer
Mentor Project, where he took lessons with composers Mark Camphouse,
Donald Grantham and Dana Wilson. He composed The Minnesota Portraits during the
summer of 2003 and adapted the work for orchestra the following summer. In 2006
he adapted the third movement, "Mississippi River," for solo piano and
also completed a revised version of the original concert band version. In
2015 he adapted the first movement, "Historic Fort Snelling," for flute
ensemble and snare drum.
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MORE ON THE
MINNESOTA PORTRAITS
A
NOTE FROM THE COMPOSER
I wrote the three-movement suite The
Minnesota Portraits in 2003 for the Calhoun-Isles Community Band (now known
as the City of Lakes Community Band), which commissioned the work using funds
from an anonymous donor. After settling on the idea that the piece would depict
various Minnesota landmarks, I brainstormed a number of
possible directions and settled on the three movements of "Historic Fort Snelling," "Lake
Calhoun Sunrise" (later renamed "Bde Maka Ska Sunrise") and "Mississippi River."
With the opening movement, "Historic Fort
Snelling," I tried to depict Minnesota's Fort Snelling in both its original form
as a bustling center for lodging and trade, and in its current form as a cemetery
for U.S. Armed Forces veterans. The music has a pretty simple A-B-A structure,
with the fast-paced "A" section depicting the pioneer days, and the slower "B" section being a salute to those buried at Fort
Snelling National Cemetery, including my grandfather.
The second movement, originally titled "Lake Calhoun Sunrise," was inspired by
my impressions of the Minneapolis lake (now known as Bde Maka Ska) a few blocks
from where I grew up. These include memories of biking around and swimming in
the lake, having dinner and popcorn at the Refectory, and checking out sand
castles and milk carton boat races during the Aquatennial, to name a few. The
music emphasizes rising melodies and motifs (especially the rising minor second
interval) to go with the "sunrise" in the title, and there are some "mirror
image" melodies where the same sequence of pitches is played forward, then
backward, like a reflection on the water's surface. The first few measures of
the piece have a series of staccato pitches timed to mimic the rhythm of a rock
skipping across water, with one more "rock skip" coming back as the movement's
final chord. In 2018 Lake Calhoun was renamed Bde Maka Ska, so I chose to rename
the movement title "Bde Maka Ska Sunrise."
The concluding "Mississippi River" movement was inspired in part by my family's
annual childhood trips to Itasca State Park in northwestern Minnesota that
always included a stop at the Mississippi River headwaters. There the mighty
Mississippi River starts out as a small, tranquil stream running through a
stretch of rocks which you can skip over and truthfully claim that you "walked
across the Mississippi River." While composing "Mississippi River," I structured
it to start softly like the river, with a gentle oboe solo, and then gradually
include more instruments to show the river growing and picking up speed. The
middle section has some fast, tricky "mixed meter" rhythms that aren't in the
familiar 3/4 or 4/4 meter of most music—but
instead switch from 7/8 to 2/4 to 3/8, and so on. These rhythms were inspired by
the children's rhythmic chant where the letters of Mississippi are spelled out
quickly, with irregularly-placed emphasis on first M and the last three I's like
so: M-i-s-s-I-s-s-I-p-p-I. The opening oboe theme
returns at the end, now played by the brass section, and the music ends
abruptly, as if to show that the river has exited Minnesota at full strength.
– Carl Schroeder, October 2019
FURTHER INFORMATION
ON FORT SNELLING AND BDE MAKA SKA
For more information about the history of Fort Snelling and Bde Maka Ska,
please see the links below prepared by the
City of Lakes
Community Band with information to about the complicated history of the
state of Minnesota and two of the specific places being honored in The
Minnesota Portraits.
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CONCERT PERFORMANCES
concert band version unless otherwise noted
Nov. 13, 2003:
City of Lakes Community Band; Richard Raaen, conductor - Minneapolis, MN premiere
Mar. 21, 2004:
City of Lakes Community Band; Richard Raaen, conductor - Edina, MN
May 15, 2004: St. Olaf College Valhalla Band; Haley Clark, conductor -
Northfield, MN
June 8, 2004:
City of Lakes Community Band; Josh Anderson, conductor - Minneapolis, MN
June 27, 2004:
City of Lakes Community Band; Josh Anderson, conductor - St. Paul, MN
June 29, 2004:
City of Lakes Community Band; Josh Anderson, conductor - Bloomington, MN
July 7, 2004:
City of Lakes Community Band; Carrie Backman, conductor - Eden Prairie, MN
July 14, 2004:
City of Lakes Community Band; Carrie Backman, conductor - St. Louis Park, MN
July 18, 2004:
City of Lakes Community Band; Josh Anderson, conductor - Edina, MN
Nov. 21, 2004:
St. Olaf Philharmonia;
Jo Ann Polley, conductor - Northfield, MN premiere
(orchestra arrangement)
Jan. 30, 2005:
Nebraska Wind Symphony;
Erica Neidlinger, conductor - Omaha, NE
VIDEO LINK
Listen to this
performance on YouTube
Mar. 4, 2005: Cornell University Symphonic Band,
Robert Whalen, conductor - Ithaca, NY ("Bde
Maka Ska Sunrise")
VIDEO LINK
Listen to
this performance on YouTube
Apr. 4, 2005; Paynesville High School Band;
Ken Vork, conductor - Paynesville, MN
June 5, 2005:
Minnesota Symphonic Winds; Jeffrey Ruhnke,
conductor - Edina, MN
Nov. 10, 2005: Southwest High School Wind
Ensemble; Keith Liuzzi, conductor - Minneapolis, MN
June 4, 2006:
City of Lakes Community Band; Paul Kile,
conductor - Minneapolis, MN
June 18, 2006:
City of Lakes Community Band; Paul Kile,
conductor - St. Paul, MN
July 16, 2006:
City of Lakes Community Band; Paul Kile,
conductor - Edina, MN
July 18, 2006:
City of Lakes Community Band; Paul Kile,
conductor - Bloomington, MN
Nov. 19, 2006:
Star of the North Concert Band;
Wayne Feller, conductor - Red Wing, MN
Dec. 5, 2006:
Edina High School Varsity Band; Paul
Kile, conductor - Edina, MN
May 11, 2008:
City of Lakes Community Band; Paul Kile, conductor -
Minneapolis, MN ("Historic
Fort Snelling" and "Mississippi River")
Apr. 19, 2009: MBDA 9-10 State Honor Band, Tim Diem, conductor - Red Wing, MN
("Historic Fort Snelling")
VIDEO LINK
Watch this performance on YouTube
Mar. 21, 2010: Saint
Mary's University Concert Band; Janet Heukeshoven, conductor - Winona, MN
Nov. 13, 2010: Rochester
Community Band; Mike Mangan, conductor - Rochester, MN
Dec. 18, 2012:
City of Lakes Community Band;
Tedd Gullickson, conductor - Minneapolis, MN
("Historic Fort Snelling")
June 4, 2013:
Minnesota Symphonic Winds; Paul Kile,
conductor - Bloomington, MN
May 18, 2014: Northeast Orchestra; Jeffrey
Stirling, conductor - Fridley, MN (orchestra arrangement)
July 20, 2015: Flute Cocktail;
Cindy Farrell, conductor - Edina, MN premiere
("Historic Fort Snelling" flute ensemble arrangement)
Nov. 7, 2015: Flute Cocktail;
Cindy Farrell, conductor - Minneapolis, MN ("Historic Fort Snelling" flute ensemble arrangement)
Nov. 15, 2015:
Nebraska Wind Symphony;
Keith Michael Davis
- Omaha, NE
VIDEO LINK
Watch this performance on
YouTube
Sept. 24, 2016: Minnesota State Band;
Keith Liuzzi, conductor - Litchfield, MN
Oct. 14, 2016: Minnesota State Band;
Keith Liuzzi, conductor - Iron, MN ("Historic Fort Snelling" and "Mississippi
River")
VIDEO LINK
Watch this performance on Facebook
Nov. 9, 2016: Minnesota State Band;
Keith Liuzzi, conductor - Minneapolis, MN
June 24, 2017: Minnesota State Band;
Keith Liuzzi, conductor - Minneapolis, MN
Aug. 16, 2017: Minnesota State Band; Keith Liuzzi, conductor - St. Paul, MN
June 2, 2019: Hopkins
Westwind Concert Band; Mike Anderson, conductor - Hopkins, MN
VIDEO LINK
Listen to this
performance on YouTube
Oct. 24, 2023:
City of Lakes Community Band;
Maxwell Voda, conductor
NEWS ARTICLES
May 2004: "Student
composer hits high note with compositions, leadership"
(Anna Palmer, St. Olaf Magazine)
Feb. 9, 2005: "Composer
visits PAHS band practice" (Michael Jacobson, Paynesville Press)
Jan. 27, 2005: "Nebraska
Wind Symphony sets sights on youths" (Kim Roberts-Gudeman, Omaha
World-Herald)
RADIO BROADCASTS
June 28, 2006:
Classical Discoveries
(Marvin Rosen, host;
WPRB 103.3FM, Princeton, NJ) - Calhoun-Isles Community Band; Richard Raaen, conductor
RECORDINGS
The
Minnesota Portraits and other music by Carl Schroeder - Nebraska Wind Symphony; Erica Neidlinger, conductor / Cornell University
Symphonic Band; Robert Whalen, conductor
88 Keys:
Piano Music by Carl Schroeder ("Mississippi River" piano
arrangement) - Carl Schroeder, piano |
Movement II, "Bde Maka Ska Sunrise,"
playfully re-enacts the beauty of a summer daybreak over the calm waters of
Minneapolis’ scenic Bde Maka Ska (formerly known as Lake Calhoun), one of Minnesota's
more than 11,000 lakes.
Movement III, "Mississippi River,"
begins by depicting the source of the North America’s
longest river, the tranquil headwaters at Itasca, Minnesota’s oldest state park.
From there, the music and the river pick up speed, passing by the bustling
cities and towns that were built along Minnesota’s original thoroughfare. The
majestic power of the river then provides a fitting musical climax for The
Minnesota Portraits.
DETAILS
AND PURCHASING INFORMATION
