North Suburban Wind Ensemble to Present Concert at LHS

The North Suburban Wind Ensemble will present a concert Nov. 17 at Libertyville High School that will feature David Maslanka's Symphony No. 4, along with a Sousa march and other pieces.

"This concert is our first of the season and we're pretty ambitious," said Marielle Shaw, who is a member of the ensemble. She said David Maslanka's Symphony No. 4 is "a massive piece, and Maslanka's work tends to be really rhythmically intense and complex, but it's also a very beautiful, full piece."

The North Suburban Wind Ensemble consists of about 65 pieces and the group rehearses and Libertyville and Vernon Hills High Schools, Shaw said. 

"One of the things I find the neatest about the group is the way we work together," said Shaw. "Many of the members are also music educators, and so they've got before-school and after-school commitments as well as weekend things to attend to. The rest of us have full-time jobs and families to attend to as well."

The group rehearses on Tuesdays for a few hours, Shaw said, "and it's amazing what we've been able to pull together in that time."

The North Suburban Wind Ensemble is under the direction of Don Shupe, who Shaw said is "extremely communicative, and he has a way of working us incredibly hard but managing to make it fun. He's determined to get us to play at the peak of our abilities and accepts nothing less, but he still finds ways to make it fun."

The concert will be held at 4 p.m. Tickets are $5 and can be purchased at the door.