Fifteen Minutes of Fame with West Winds

West Winds comprises of clarinetist Kristi Sturgeon, Mark Watson playing horn, and Dayna Smith playing bassoon.

This Fifteen Minutes of Fame call for "West Winds" is inspired by the folk music of the composer's current country of residence or his/her nationality.

Dayna Smith holds a Bachelor of Music and a Masters in Business Administration degrees from Oklahoma City University , and continued her study in bassoon performance at Baylor University . A native of Lawton , Oklahoma , she has played the bassoon for over 25 years, performing in chamber groups, orchestras and professional bands. In addition to performing with the West Winds, Dayna also performs with Chamber Music of Tulsa, Starlight Bands, and Bartlesville Symphony Orchestra. Other recent performances include concerts with the Jackson Bay Quintet, Signature Symphony and the Tulsa Community College Orchestra. Dayna studied under Betty Johnson, Eric Arbiter and Dr. Kent Moore. Dayna also teaches bassoon privately in the Tulsa area.

Kristi Sturgeon holds a Bachelor of Music Education from the University of Tulsa and a Master of Music from the University of Oklahoma where she studied with Dr. David Etheridge. During her career, she has performed with many area ensembles, including the Tulsa Philharmonic, the Signature Symphony, the Starlight Band, and in various venues in the Tulsa area as a freelance musician. Since 1993, Kristi has maintained a private studio at Owasso High School . In 2000, she joined the Ft. Smith Symphony in Ft. Smith , Arkansas as the group’s bass clarinetist and can be heard playing on three of the cds the orchestra has recorded on the NAXOS label. Kristi joined the faculty of the University of Tulsa as clarinet professor in 2010. When not playing, she can be found knitting or spinning yarn, arranging and composing, gardening, or enjoying life with her husband and two sons.

For over forty year, Mark Watson has been an active horn player in the Tulsa Area. He has been a member of the Tulsa Philharmonic, the Signature Symphony and the Starlight Band. Additionally, he has performed in the pit for Tulsa Opera, Tulsa Ballet Theatre, and many Broadway shows. Other musical activities have included numerous chamber music performances, church services and the occasional big band or solo performance. When he is not playing the horn, Mark is an information systems analyst support Maintenance and Engineering Systems at the American Airlines Maintenance Base in Tulsa . He enjoys fishing and camping and his life with his wife, Margaret, and their West highland Terriers

Concert Dates

  • May 29, 2014 - Living Arts of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma

15 one-minute selections for West Winds

Concert program

  • Poolkuh!!

    David Bohn

    David Bohn received degrees in composition from the University of Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the University of Illinois. He currently resides in West Allis, Wisconsin, and is the music director at St. John's Lutheran Church in West Milwaukee. He is the President of the Wisconsin Alliance for Composers.

    Northeastern Wisconsin (from whence I hail) is a melting pot of many ethnicities. One musical tradition binds all of them together.

  • Live Oaks

    Erik Branch

    ERIK BRANCH is a native of New York City, and received a BA and MA in Music (Composition) from Hunter College. He lives near Orlando, Florida, where he is active as a pianist, musical director, composer/arranger, operatic tenor, and actor on stage and screen.

    Live Oaks draws its musical inspiration from traditional Afro-American music of the South —blues, spirituals, field hollers. It was suggested by the sight of the massive live oaks, draped with Spanish moss, which I see around me every day in Florida, and which have been witness to so much human tragedy.

  • Dabke for Lebanon

    Karen Naifeh Harmon

    A Nationally Certified Violin Teacher, Karen Naifeh Harmon recently earned a Specialist Certificate in Arranging through the prestigious Berklee College of Music. Karen is a member of the American Composers Forum, and has performed worldwide with her Tulsa Honors Orchestra students including Italy, Ireland, Austria, Germany and Argentina.

    I am proud of my Lebanese heritage - my grandparents both immigrated to America from the same small town in Lebanon, then met in Kentucky and moved to Sapulpa, Oklahoma. This Dabke is a traditional Arabic dance for weddings, giving homeage to my heritage and makes me remember the Dabke we danced to at my own wedding.

  • Double-Wind

    Norbert Rudolf Hoffmann

    Born in Ingolstadt (Germany) Study of composition (Fritz Büchtger, Munich) Study of music at the conservatoire of Innsbruck: composition (Günther Andergassen) and conducting (Edgar Seipenbusch) Study of physics at the universities of Munich (Germany) and Innsbruck (Austria), finished with the diploma Author of books (computer technique, neural networks)

    In my native country (Bavaria) there is a kind of dance called "Zwiefacher" which means "double". Typical of this dance is the alternation of duple and triple time. Unlike the folk version, Double-Wind uses a very special kind of "tonality".

  • A Sussex Morn

    Kevin Holland

    Born in Lancashire, England, Kevin Holland is a qualified secondary Music teacher and active musician, arranging and composing for various ensembles. An early Music enthusiast he studied the harpsichord with Gary Cooper at the Royal Northern College of Music. He has recently had Five Recorder trios published by Orpheus Music.

    ‘A Sussex Morn’ is a portrait of an autumnal morning on the South Downs, England. The mystical and sparsely populated Downs (an area covering 100 square miles) is represented by the bareness of the accompaniment and its melody.

  • The Jonessie Reel

    Allan H. Jones

    My playing and conducting career began at an early age. Playing trumpet in numerous orchestras and conducted small orchestras and wind ensembles. Being a self taught composer, composing and arranging tunes for all types of instruments has brought great pleasure and I intend to keep on writing whenever I get the inspiration.

    This piece has been written in a typical Scottish folk dance style. The title of the piece is original, in that it comes from my surname with the added letters to form a made up word that incorporates one of the most famous tourist attractions in my country.

  • Chastooshkas (Limericks)

    Vladimir Karpenko

    Vladimir Karpenko (1958) was born in Ridder (East Kazakhstan), studied in Almaty conservatory. Now he lives in Irkutsk, Russia. Нe is the composer, the musicologist, the pianist, the teacher. The author of compositions for a symphonic orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, a piano, a organ, vocal music.

    “Chastooshkas (Limericks)”. It is a comic genre of the Russian musical folklore. Each of participants one by one sings or plays an own melody.

  • Sabah El-Ward

    Emil Khoury

    Dr. Emil Khoury has various works: Great Love cantata for the late King Hussein of Jordan; Glory Maker cantata for King Abdullah the 2nd of Jordan; Our Love Is So Bright for Kay Weaver; the music of Dive in Aqaba and A Teacher’s Memoirs films and My Love Turkish TV drama; and orchestral and ensemble music.

  • OY CHORNA

    Dmitry Kitsenko

    Dmitry Kitsenko studied composition with Solomon Lobel and Tiberiu Olah, listed in the Musik Geselschaft und Gegenwart (Germany), The New Grove of Music and Musicians (England), a complete biographical reference work "International Who's Who in Classical Music 2003", Encyclopedia of the Modern Ukraine, and The Ukrainian Musical Encyclopedia. Master of Arts (2000).

    OY CHORNA for clarinet, bassoon & horn is the composition inspired by the folk music of the Ukraine and represented Paraphrase on the well-known Ukrainian folk song. This one-minute piece has been written specifically for the Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame project and "West Winds".

  • Painting VII: Tuscan Postcard

    Aurelio Scotto

    Young Italian composer, Aurelio Scotto’s music has been performed in Italy, Russia, Usa, Malta, Japan, Swizterland, Brazil, United Kingdom, and many others countries, and published by Wicky Editions, Taukay Editions, Master Symphony Editions, Ars Publica, MAP Editions, Première Editions, Universal Music Publishing Ricordi Edition. (www.aurelioscotto.it)

    Little invention on a small fragment of a popular tuscan melody (Tuscan, Italy).

  • Triskelion Moderato

    Juan Maria Solare

    Juan Maria Solare, born 1966 in Argentina, works currently in Germany as composer, pianist (contemporary & tango) and teaching at the University of Bremen and at the Hochschule fuer Kuenste Bremen. His music has been performed in five continents. Thirteen CDs of different performers include at least one piece of him.

    Triskelion Moderato: A Triskelion is an image consisting of three interlocked spirals, or three bent human legs. Triskelion Moderato is a deconstructed tango for 3 interspersed instruments, each playing ostinati based on rhythmical gestures that stem from the tango music - Argentina being my home country.

  • Zydeco Zebra

    Samuel Stokes

    Samuel Stokes has a Ph.D. in music composition from Louisiana State University where he studied under Dinos Constantinides. Among Stokes’s compositions are Symphony No. 1, "Eustace the Monk," which was premiered by the LSU Symphony, and two full-length musicals entitled Dracula and Bird Millman.

    "Zydeco Zebra" utilizes the folk idioms found in the Zydeco musical style of the French Creole speakers of southwest Louisiana. Zydeco is a blend of Cajun music and the blues.

  • Komodo Dragon Dancing

    Ananda Sukarlan

    Composer & pianist Ananda Sukarlan has composed orchestral, chamber and solo works for performers who perform them such as violinist Midori Goto, Woodwind Principals of Boston S.O., works for ballet and film music. He is the founder of YMSI (Indonesian Classical Music Foundation) and Ananda Sukarlan International Piano Competition. Born in Jakarta in 1968, he now lives in Spain and writes his popular blog http://andystarblogger.blogspot.com

    "Komodo Dragon Dancing" is based on dance rhythms from the archipelago of Nusa Tenggara in East Indonesia, where the island Komodo belongs. That island is famous for its Varanus dragons, now the biggest living lizards in the world.

  • Riffs

    Cory Winters

    Cory Winters is a young musician from Arkansas. He studied composition with Paul Dickinson at the University of Central Arkansas and Mark Volker at Belmont University, earning an MM in 2012. Cory’s musical background includes Irish and American folk music, shape-note singing, blues, country, and a variety of art music.

    America has many folk music styles and several are used, albeit abstractly, in Riffs. The bassoon’s ostinato is reminiscent of blues, while the clarinet’s insistent accompanying drone transforms into a pentatonic motive also developed by the horn. As in several folk music forms, the beat pattern is constantly uneven.

  • West Winds and Fire

    Julie Ann Stenberg Zeidel

    I have written dozens of original compositions for various size groups, from duets to jazz combos to orchestral works. My compositions typically incorporate jazz concepts. They have been played at various venues. For example, Zeitgeist New Music Ensemble has played one of my pieces, and the Minnesota Sinfonia premiered one of my compositions in January of 2014. Another has been selected for an International Women’s Day event in March of 2014.

    The piece I am submitting is based on my roots of funk, jazz, and r&b.