VALDOSTA — Valdosta State University’s 54-member concert band will perform 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 24, in Whitehead Auditorium, VSU Fine Arts Building, corner of Oak and Brookwood.

Admission is free of charge and open to the public, university officials said.

The VSU Concert Band will perform “Mother Earth (A Fanfare),” which composer David Maslanka’s describes as an urgent call “to be extremely alive and aware in our present moment, to become awake to the needs of our beloved planet, and to respond to it as a living entity.”

The VSU Concert Band will continue with “Shenandoah,” as composed by Frank Ticheli and inspired by the American folk song of the same name.

“In my setting of ‘Shenandoah,’ I was inspired by the freedom and beauty of the folk melody and by the natural images evoked by the words, especially the image of a river,” Ticheli notes. “I was less concerned with the sound of a rolling river than with its life-affirming energy, its timelessness. Sometimes the accompaniment flows quietly under the melody; other times, it breathes alongside it. The work’s mood ranges from quiet reflection, through growing optimism, to profound exaltation.”

The VSU Concert Band will then perform E.E. Bagley’s “National Emblem,” one of the all-time great American marches, and “Variations on a Korean Folk Song,” as inspired by the Korean folk song “Arirang,” which composer John Barnes Chance heard while in South Korea with the United States Army in the late 1950s. 

The concert will open with a special guest performance by the Berrien High School Jazz Band, followed by the Berrien High School Symphonic Band. Their program lineup features “Don’t Let Up” by Erik Sherburne, “Brass Machine” by Mark Taylor, “Blue Skies” by Roger Holmes, “Silvercrest” by James Swearingen, “Drums of the Saamis” by Samuel Hazo and “Flourish for Winds” by Gary Fagan.