Rewriting The Rep: Modernizing The Ensemble Experience Through Contemporary Media

In an effort to fight classism in music, composers of the past integrated recognizable folk tunes into “classical” performances, creating wildly successful pieces that drew people from all walks of life to the performing arts. Today, there is a new rift between “classical” and contemporary music, one that firmly separates what can and cannot be performed in wind ensemble settings. Consequently, music education rarely includes contemporary genres in its curriculum, leading music students to continue choosing only the same “classical” repertoire yearly. With arrangements of music from The Last of Us, Steven Universe, Phoebe Bridgers, Johnny Cash, Harry Styles, and Radiohead, I propose ways to modernize the ensemble experience through contemporary media. For this project, I created arrangements of six contemporary songs from pop, rock, indie, and country, as well as the music from television shows and video games. The main goal of this project was to experiment with arranging as a tool for education, and with how music from today’s contemporary media would sound formatted for wind bands. Other goals included increasing my personal knowledge of arranging techniques and softwares, as well as creating a product that showcases modern, recognizable songs formatted for the characteristic wind band sound.