NEC Wind Ensemble
NEC Wind Ensemble, conducted by Charles Peltz, offers students an opportunity to play literature from the Renaissance through the present day for wind, brass, and percussion. Each year a number of faculty and students appear as soloists in Wind Ensemble concerts. In addition to its concert series in Jordan Hall, the ensemble sometimes performs at national music conferences as well as at various venues in and around Boston. During the past two decades, the Wind Ensemble has commissioned and premiered new works by Pulitzer Prize composers Michael Colgrass, John Harbison, and Gunther Schuller, plus other distinguished composers such as Sir Michael Tippett, Daniel Pinkham, and William Thomas McKinley. Through performances and recordings, the Wind Ensemble has established a reputation as one of the country’s premier wind ensembles. Recent recordings for Mode extend a recording tradition that dates back to the 1960s and the founding of the ensemble by Frank Battisti.
NEC Symphonic Winds
NEC Symphonic Winds, conducted by William Drury, performs woodwind, brass, and percussion repertoire from the Renaissance through the present day for octet to full wind ensemble. Important works that are sometimes neglected because of unusual instrumentation form an integral part of four annual Jordan Hall concerts. Bronze Music, the ensemble's debut CD on Albany Records (under its previous name, Jordan Winds) includes works by Larry Bell, Peter Child, Linda Dusman, Joshua Feltman, Gerald Levinson, David Macbride, and Malcolm Peyton.
Symphonic Winds also reads standard orchestral repertoire that serves to improve members’ ensemble skills.