2025-2026

In a time when we may all feel disconnected or fractured, the 2025–2026 Catawba College Wind Ensemble Concert Series, Finding Belongingness, offers a space to reconnect with ourselves, with each other, and with the world around us.

Featuring a mixture of contemporary and classic works for concert band, the series will explore many layers of what it means to belong. The series looks at how empathy and shared stories build connection, how personal growth and collective memory shape our sense of place, and how love and nature thread belonging into our everyday lives. Each concert presents a curated angle, inviting audiences to reflect, celebrate, and find belongingness through music.

Through Each Other’s Eyes (October 7, 2025)

Explore belongingness through the lens of shared experience. This opening concert journeys through emotion, culture, history, and myth; inviting us to create connection and empathy by seeing the world through each other's eyes. 

Words to Live By (November 24, 2025)

Discover the power of resilience and transformation. Works included in this concert reflect personal and communal contexts of belonging, illustrating how individual growth and shared truths help us find our place. 

Visions in Past & Present (March 5, 2026)

Honor tradition while embracing new voices. This concert reveals how belonging is shaped by history, heritage, and the bravery to move forward together. 

Love & Nature (April 27, 2026)

Celebrate the intimate ties between human emotion and the natural world. Selected works on this final concert experience remind us that belonging is not only about community, but also our connection to the earth which sustains us.

Visions in Past & Present   

March 5, 2026

Belonging isn’t always about where we are. Sometimes it’s about where we’ve come from and how we carry those visions forward. This concert bridges time: honoring the voices that shaped us while embracing the voices still emerging. It’s about continuity and contrast, tradition and evolution, reflection and momentum. We begin with Alfred Reed’s Festival Prelude which is music of ceremony and shared purpose. It sets the tone with a sense of occasion and unity, reminding us of what’s possible when we gather, listen, and celebrate together. Julie Giroux’s One Life Beautiful turns the lens inward. As a tender, personal elegy, it honors the sacredness of individual experience and speaks to the way a single life, simply lived, can leave a lasting resonance. In Persichetti’s Pageant, we experience tension and release, dissonance and resolve. His use of traditional forms colliding with modern harmony becomes a metaphor for time itself: how old structures are reshaped by new voices without being erased. Then, Dwayne Milburn’s American Hymnsong Suite reflects visions of the south, and of its history to honor Catawba College’s 100 years in Salisbury. This work is a declaration: belonging is not static, and views the world through the lens of a day in the south. Alton Adams’ The Governor’s Own offers a moment of historical reclamation—a march from 1921 by a composer whose contributions were long overshadowed. In hearing his work today, we widen our lens of belonging to include voices once left out of the narrative. Finally, John Mackey’s Undertow propels us into the future. It pulses with youthful energy, unpredictability, and drive. It doesn’t look back, instead choosing to surge forward. This is the sound of what comes next.

Conductors and Guest Artists

Dr. J. Ben Jones is Director of Bands and Assistant Professor of Music at Catawba College where he serves as conductor for the Wind Ensemble, director of the Marching Band and Pep Band, and administers the entire Catawba College bands program. Prior to this appointment he served as the Assistant Director of Bands at Elon University from 2020 to 2022 and as interim conductor of the Duke University Wind Symphony during the fall of 2021. Ben earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Instrumental Conducting at the University of North Carolina Greensboro in 2021. While at UNCG, he served as the principal conductor of the University Band and was the co-conductor of the Symphonic Band during the 2018–19 school year. He was also a frequent guest conductor with the Wind Ensemble, Casella Sinfonietta, and served as an instructor in undergraduate instrumental conducting. Prior to his graduate studies Ben taught in the public school system of North Carolina as the Director of Bands at Ashbrook High School in Gastonia, where he oversaw marching and concert bands and collaborative efforts within the community. An advocate for music education and building leaders in school music programs, Ben has presented leadership training workshops, worked with young music educators, adjudicated, and served as a guest clinician for many band programs around the Carolinas. Ben is a native of Gastonia, NC, and holds a BME from the University of South Carolina and an MM in Instrumental Conducting from UNCG. He has studied with Dr. Kevin Geraldi, Dr. John Locke, and Dr. Jonathan Caldwell, and is a member of the National Association for Music Education, the North Carolina Music Educators Association, the College Band Directors National Association, and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia.

Mr. Quinten Wren, Hough High School

Ensemble Personnel

Catawba College Wind Ensemble

High School Honor Band