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About Fiesta Mexicana / Santa Fe Saga
Amazon.com Howard Dunn died just weeks after the release of this 1990 recording. He had served for 20 years on the faculty of Southern Methodist University, where he led the SMU Wind Symphony and taught music history and conducting. As the founder and artistic director of the Dallas Wind Symphony, which made its debut in 1985, he helped transform what was initially a sight-reading group into one of the few all-professional, non-military wind bands in the country. That Dunn left behind a first-rate organization is clear enough from these readings. The virtuosic writing of Gould's Santa Fe Saga sparks the Texans to some fine playing, as does the colorful scoring of H. Owen Reed's La Fiesta Mexicana--a large-scale work that pays off its debt to Hindemith, and its even more evident borrowings from Petrushka, in shiny new pesos. The extraordinary ambiance of the Meyerson Symphony Center is nicely captured as well: live but not too reverberant, with a superbly graduated decay, it proves to be ideal for this music. --Ted Libbey
