The Snowman: Film, plus live music by the Triangle Wind Ensemble

The Triangle Wind Ensemble’s holiday concert continues the tradition of screening The Snowman while performing the music live.

The 27-minute film shares the story of a young boy who creates a snowman which magically comes to life. Together, the two take a playful journey around the world.

The concert will, which takes place Sunday, December 15th, at 4 p.m., at Cary Arts Center, 101 Dry Avenue, Cary, features a screening of this film, with live music performed by the Triangle Wind Ensemble.

Tickets cost $16, with tickets for kids age 13-17 just $10.

Kids 12 and under receive free tickets in person at the box office, while supplies last.

The program also includes:

A Christmas Overture — Nigel Hess
Three Klezmer Miniatures — Philip Sparke
Dance of the Jesters — Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky / arr. Cramer
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer — trad. arr. Iwai
Sleigh Ride — Leroy Anderson
Sheltering Sky — John Mackey
The Snowman — Howard Blake

The program will also include an encore performance of Triangle Wind Ensemble’s Sheltering Sky Animation Project.

Sheltering Sky Animation Project

In 1940, Disney made the world of orchestral music more accessible to audiences with the release of their wonderful animated film, Fantasia. Images of enchanted broomsticks laboring to Dukas’ Sorcerer’s Apprentice, hippopotami in tutus pirouetting to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, and dinosaurs lumbering to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring have helped engage audiences for generations.

In celebration of our 20th Anniversary season, the Triangle Wind Ensemble undertook a similar project, this time using an original piece of wind band music as the source material. The composition we selected, Sheltering Sky, is a beautiful piece by one of the most popular and talented wind band composers writing today, John Mackey. To create the animation, we commissioned NC State University Associate Professor of Art + Design, Marc Russo, to develop a story and animation to match Mackey’s music as well as Disney’s centaurs do Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony.

The final Sheltering Sky animation premiered at TWE’s 20th Anniversary Concert on April 13, 2019 in the Cary Arts Center. The Triangle Wind Ensemble performed Mackey’s music live while the film was projected onto the stage’s screen.

By the end of 2019 our animation will be made available to the wind band community as a whole so that their ensembles and audiences can share in the experience that is this Sheltering Sky Project. School band programs across the country and world will have access to the film for free.

Triangle Wind Ensemble

The Triangle Wind Ensemble is an adult wind ensemble based in North Carolina’s Triangle region. Many of the area’s most talented wind and percussion players join together weekly to practice and perform an exciting range of music for audiences in both formal and informal settings. Our repertoire includes transcriptions of orchestral classics, original compositions for wind band, small ensemble pieces, popular medleys and arrangements, as well as holiday and patriotic music for special occasions.