Concert Band

North Hills Fantasy

Grade 5 | 6 Mins

North Hills Fantasy was commissioned by the North Hills High School Bands, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Len Lavelle, Director) as part of a commissioning programme that has run since 1965 – the longest of its kind in the USA.

The work opens with a reflective, unaccompanied solo for alto saxophone which develops into a chorale for horns and saxes. This is taken up by the trumpets and subsides to a change of key and mood, with highly decorated solos, of folk-like character, for clarinet, bassoon and saxes. These solos build to a climax for full band, which heralds a triumphal return of the horn chorale, accompanied by florid woodwind figuration. But the mood soon relaxes and fragments of earlier melodies return in calmer mood to close the work peacefully.

Designed as a virtuosic and effervescent opener, Mercury Rising opens with nervous energy and driving, syncopated rhythms in a blaze of colour. The horns and saxophones then introduce a broad melody, which the trumpets subsequently take up after a change of tonality. A quieter moment introduces a distant fanfare on muted horns over bubbling 16th notes in the low clarinets. This is interrupted by a passionate tenor melody but soon returns on the full brass section, accompanied by echoes of the opening woodwind figuration, and is extended to bring the piece to a triumphal close.