20 Years of Excellence, Encouragement, Professional Development, and Friendship By Guest Author, Donald Sorah, Ph.D. The idea for Winds of the Mountain Empire began in April 2006. I performed as a trumpeter in the orchestra for Symphony of the Mountains’ performance of Verdi’s Requiem. The idea did not come to me during the performance. It developed […]
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Review by Evelyn Pursley-Kopitzke, Composer The Winds of the Mountain Empire celebrated their twentieth anniversary with their twenty-sixth concert on July 19, 2026. This year musicians from six states congregated in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, for the professional musicians’ honor-band equivalent, under the direction of Dr. Donald Sorah, Professor of Music, University of Virginia, Wise.
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***World Premiere On Sunday, July 16, 2023, I was again privileged to attend an excellent community band performance of all 21st Century music. The oldest pieces were written in 2005, and the concert included three *world premieres. Most of these works are tone poems; music that tells stories, or suggests specific emotions and scenes, giving
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Yesterday, I was privileged to attend a community band performance of all new music. Having lived through—and rejected—the mid to late 20th Century “serious” music’s apparent attitude, “If it’s incomprehensible and I can’t connect At All, it must be great music,” I approached this concert of unknowns with caution. My caution was unwarranted. There wasn’t
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The thought began quite some time ago with someone in an online church musician group where I’m a member. They mentioned how hard it was to find any music for unchurched and non-believers’ funerals and asked for suggestions. Funeral music always seems to be exclusively religious: eternal life in heaven, the love of God, etc.
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Deep in space, a million-ish years before humans walked the earth, a white-hot star reached critical mass. Its gasses swirled violently, imploded and then exploded—sending all the matter in its star system off at wild angles and nearly impossible speeds. An eighty-kilometer fragment from the innermost heavy gravity planet shot away on a ballistic trajectory
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I tend to lean toward being charitable with parents of young children, especially when I read about seemingly preventable tragedies. We get parent-blaming stories about small children escaping adult supervision and getting onto a highway, lost in the woods, climbing into a hot car in their own home’s driveway and getting stuck, drowning in a
The age-old question of “inspiration”—where that music comes from—has always fascinated me. Paintings of angels hovering beside composers and dictating new music are common. Music’s origination is often attributed only to centuries-dead geniuses and divine inspiration, certainly nothing that happens now. Of course, as a child, I believed that. Fast-forward to my recent history. Since
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It has been said that the price of a long life is outliving your loved ones. I’m realizing this is an extravagantly costly price. Processing the sudden loss of an age peer friend is beyond difficult. And as my age approaches the biblical three-score and ten, I suspect that losing family and friends will become
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