Recital: Cody York '24, Trumpet

Eugène Bozza | Rustiques

Halsey Stevens | Sonata for Trumpet and Piano

Allegro moderato
Adagio tenero
Allegro

INTERMISSION

Tōru Takemitsu | Paths

Igor Stravinsky | Octet for Wind Instruments

Sinfonia
Tema con variazioni
Finale

Maito Yokota, Koji Kondo (arr. Dan Barak) | Suite from Super Mario Galaxy

Program note

First released in November 2007, Super Mario Galaxy took gaming’s favorite Italian plumber to a place never seen before in the series. Indeed, Mario had already been on numerous adventures by that point: he had eaten too many mushrooms to count, scoured vast pipe systems beneath the Mushroom Kingdom, paired up with Yoshi, jumped into mystical worlds hidden within paintings in Peach’s Castle, and spent what was supposed to be a fun island getaway cleaning up polluted beaches. The only place left to go was the vast frontier of space – and it was a perfect opportunity to show off the still-new experimental motion control technology of the Nintendo Wii.
        The game begins at a once-a-century celebration known as the Star Festival, where shining crystals known as Star Bits rain down on the Mushroom Kingdom. But everything goes awry when a series of airships appear in the sky, led by none other than the Koopa King, Bowser. What happens next is, of course, a trope of the Mario series: Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach, the ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom. Except this time, Bowser’s ambitions have grown in scale: he seeks to use a mystical fuel source known as Power Stars to rule the cosmos from his compound at the center of the universe – with Peach by his side.
        In a last-ditch effort to thwart Bowser, Mario clings onto the side of Peach’s Castle as Bowser’s fleet lifts it off the ground and into space. But he is thrown into the void by one of Bowser’s minions and wakes up on a small but habitable planet. Desperate for clues about where he is and what had happened to the princess, he meets three star creatures and their mother figure, a human named Rosalina.  Rosalina is cryptic in her answers at first, but sends one of her lumas off to accompany Mario and tells him that to save Peach, he must find the Grand Stars and use their power to fly to the center of the universe.
        When Mario rescues his first Grand Star, its power guides him to a defunct space station called the Comet Observatory. As it turns out, this is Rosalina and her lumas’ home… but at that moment, it couldn’t go anywhere. The observatory relied on Grand Stars as its fuel source, and Bowser had robbed them and almost wiped them out right before he kidnapped Peach. The station could fly to the center of the universe at full power, but now it couldn’t even keep the lights on. Fortunately, the Grand Star that Mario found restored power to one of the station’s six observation domes, the Terrace. From there, he could be launched from the Observatory to nearby galaxies in search of Power Stars -- smaller fuel-supplying stars which could eventually lead him to Grand Stars at Bower and his son’s various strongholds. Dome by dome, and one wacky galaxy after another, Mario is able to retrieve the Power Stars and Grand Stars, restoring the Comet Observatory to its former glory. The journey took him to egg planets, haunted houses, a naval base, beaches full of talking penguins, a galaxy filled with toys, and many other corners of the cosmos.
        Mario does eventually rescue the princess, but along the way, he learns that Rosalina has a tragic backstory of her own. When she was a little girl, a spaceship carrying a luma crashed into her backyard.  The luma, terrified, was in search of his mother, whom he was separated from. Rosalina decides to take to the stars alongside the luma to find her. But they never do find her, nor did Rosalina ever see her own
family again. She decided that she would act as the luma’s mother, and soon many other lumas joined them. They landed on an icy comet one day and found construction tools and star bits beneath the surface. This is where they would build a new home – the Comet Observatory. There, she would nurture the lumas until they were old enough to transform into stars, galaxies, and Power Stars. In the end, she understood perfectly how Mario’s love for Peach led him on a cosmic quest – and because of her own story, she was eager to help rescue his “Special One.”
        While Super Mario Galaxy, as well as its sequel, entertain like all video games do, there is a greater message to be taken away from Mario’s quest and Rosalina’s story. At their peak, video games are an art form that, just like movies and books, are capable of letting our imaginations run wild while still incorporating themes that are so integral to our Earthly lives. In Super Mario Galaxy, messages about the importance of family and belonging to something (much) bigger than oneself underscore the entire game. When I was a little eight-year-old, I never grasped these undertones because I wasn’t ready to understand them yet. But now, over a decade later, everything makes sense. That is why I believe this game has had such an impact on me: because as I matured, so did my understanding of what it means to have and stick to my values in a world of (to steal a line from Mario) “cosmic proportions.” Senior recitals and senior years in general are often times of reflection on how we got to where we are, and I thought it would be fitting to throw myself and my colleagues a little nostalgia bone to never forget where I came from.
        As no masterpiece is complete without an iconic soundtrack, I wanted to pay tribute to some of Super Mario Galaxy’s legendary orchestral tracks composed by Mahito Yokota and longtime Nintendo composer Koji Kondo. I asked Dan to arrange a four-movement suite consisting of the themes of Gusty Garden Galaxy, the Comet Observatory, the first of three battles against Bowser, and the end credits. Gusty Garden Galaxy is perhaps the most well-known track in the game, with a sweeping orchestration that portrays the flow of wind across luscious planet-sized gardens as Mario maneuvers a giant, balloon-like flower between them. The second track, Comet Observatory, is a classical waltz that plays in the space station. There are actually three versions of this theme, each having thicker orchestration than the last to represent the gradual restoration of power to the Observatory. This arrangement includes the second and third variants. The third track of the suite, the slow-burning King Bowser, depicts the evil and terror of the Koopa King as Mario fights him across artificially-created planetoids. And finally, we will play the Staff Roll, a theme that is both grand and reflective, to cap off Mario’s adventure and celebrate his victory as well as my time at NEC. It has been a pleasure to work with this group of people, several of whom love the game just as much as I do, and we are excited for you to hear the result!