Eastman Wind Ensemble

The Eastman Wind Ensemble was founded by Frederick Fennell at the Eastman School of Music in 1952. It is often credited with helping re-define the performance of wind band music. At the time, concert bands used all their players for every piece, regardless of whether the composer had written a part for that instrument. If there was no part for an instrument you had in the band - for example, a contrabass clarinet or a string bass - the conductor or the publisher would have an arranger add one. Or you would simply have that instrument double another instrument - the string bass could play the tuba part, for instance. Also, bigger was better, and even though there would normally be three clarinet parts, many university concert bands would have 20 or 30 clarinets, or more.

Fennell turned these practices around. The Eastman Wind Ensemble would have one player on each part, and used only the instrumentation for each piece specified by the composer. Fennell coined the term wind ensemble to refer to this specific kind of wind band. The repertoire of the group included standard concert band pieces, but also chamber music for winds, and the instrumentation varied as required. In contrast to typical concert band practice, the Eastman Wind Ensemble kept its focus on original wind music rather than orchestral transcriptions. The Eastman Wind Ensemble has premiered over 150 works, including works by composers Bernard Rands and Joseph Schwantner.

A series of commercial recordings on the Mercury label spread the influence of Fennell's wind ensemble concept far beyond the geographic reach of the group's concerts, and helped form a new generation of wind band educators and musicians far beyond Rochester. Many of these recordings are still commercially available (now on CD and download) almost seven decades after they were recorded.

In 1987, the Eastman Wind Ensemble was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance - Instrumental Soloist or Soloists (with or without orchestra) for its 1986 album Carnaval, a collaboration with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.