Each year, the La Porte High School band program hosts a recital night. All students are split into chamber groups and have a chance to rehearse for about a month, giving them a valuable musical experience different from a large ensemble. This year, the wind ensemble trombones (Kale Condo, Sam Tharpe, Dillon Conlin, Zane Kabacinski, and Andy Harbich) asked me to write them a quintet for this performance on February 1, 2024.
In my mind, the phrase "floating on the wind" has connotations of both child's play and horror. I attempted to fuse both senses in this piece.
JOE CLARK is one of the band directors at La Porte High School and serves as principal clarinet with the La Porte County Symphony Orchestra in La Porte, Indiana. He received his Master's in Wind Band Conducting from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under Dr. Steve Peterson. While there, he was a co-director of the UIUC Clarinet Choir and a member of the Sapphire Reed Quintet. Previously, he attended the Eastman School of Music and the University of Rochester, where he received degrees in music education, clarinet performance, and mathematics. While there, he studied clarinet with Kenneth Grant and conducting with Oliver Hagen and Eric Laprade. He has played with a number of chamber groups, including the reed quintet CirQ, the wind quintet Azzimato Winds, and the clarinet quartet Three Stands Apiece.
