On Sunday afternoon, Binghamton University’s Wind Symphony presented their first show of the Spring 2013 semester, “La Mer.” With the sea working as the central theme of the performance, the audience — a mix of students, parents, and locals — were taken far away from the cold Binghamton area and right out to sea.

“It’s great to see your friends in a different environment; particularly doing things that they are passionate about,” said Jenna Palazzolo, an undeclared freshman who watched her friends perform.

Conductor Daniel Fabricius presented the show as a “varied program of old and contemporary music, using the sea as a common thread.” Most of the music is folkie, hailing from the island nation of Great Britain. However, the show also dealt heavily in American sailing and musical interpretations of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.”

The first piece, “Sea Songs,” started off very upbeat and immediately we were out to sea! The piece is an arrangement of British sea-songs by composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. One can hear the subtle tunes of British patriotism within the music, sailing being a huge part of island-culture. The second piece was “Gravity Wave,” a contemporary piece by a relatively new composer Brian Balmages unlike any conventional music piece. According to Fabricius, the song is a “mix of warm sounds and cold sounds,” delivering an “illusion of shortening and lengthening time.” The song delivers the imagery of the ocean, and there are, in fact, scientific studies and mathematical formulas which supports why. The opening of the piece really sets the atmosphere, until the tempo increases and, by the end of the song, the listener is plunged into chaos until ultimately the the ensemble is pulled together in “rhythmic unison,” ending the piece.

Fabricius introduced the third piece by explaining, “Toe tapping is allowed, but please fight the urge to dance.” “Molly on the Shore,” by composer Percy Aldridge Grainger, was a complicated and rhythmic folk piece. Following that, “Fantasy on American Sailing Songs” by composer Clare Grundman reminds the listener of those childhood dreams of being a sailor on the open sea. A “robust medley of sailing songs,” it sets the feeling that one is really sailing on a ship with Fabricius as captain.

The fifth and final piece which marked the “end of the voyage” was entitled “Of Sailors and Whales,” which is a tone poem based on five scenes from Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.” Each of the five songs in this piece was preceded by a moving reading from Moby Dick by local personality Mo “Reese” Taylor (you may know him as the director of the University Pep Band).

Mary Weber, an undeclared freshman, loved the way the readings and the music interacted together.

“The music complemented the readings perfectly. I wish that when I was actually reading the book, it was a bit more like this!” said Weber.

Each song interpreted the emotion of each scene in a very unique and different way. During the third movement/scene (out of five), the symphony sang lowly throughout the piece, delivering a very eerie feel, religious, spiritual and beautifully profound. You could hear Ahab’s anger and the wrath of Moby Dick, and it proved to be a fitting end to the performance. It reminded the audience that the sea, while romanticized, is just as angry as it is beautiful.

“It’s especially rewarding when a song can give you the chills, ‘Gravity Wave,’ for me, while you’re playing it,” said Richard Barley, an undeclared freshman who plays the trumpet.