Campus Connection

New UW-La Crosse director Tom Seddon will lead the UW-L Wind Ensemble in an English folk-song themed concert 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 11, at the Christ Episcopal Church, 111 Ninth St. N., La Crosse. The ensemble will perform “Lincolnshire Posy” by Percy Grainger as well as a number of other folk songs, concluding with “A Christmas Festival” by Leroy Anderson. “Lincolnshire Posy” is a six-movement work based on folk songs that Grainger collected in the first part of the 20th Century from Lincolnshire, England, and then set for band. “It’s one of the premiere works for bands — a turning point in band music,” Seddon explains. “It completely changed the way people think about band music as an expressive art form — not merely performed marches or transcriptions of orchestral pieces.” Like the music he conducts, Seddon, who joined UW-L’s music faculty this fall, is also making a transition in music style. His primary role was director of bands, including directing athletic bands, for the last seven years at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Conn. As UW-L’s new director of the Wind Ensemble and director of Orchestral Studies, he’s been allowed to explore the “creative music process” more deeply, he explains. At CCSU he earned the university’s 2009-10 Excellence in Teaching Award. He plans to display that same devotion here at UW-L. Seddon calls his teaching style “demanding.” But he says the success of his bands doesn’t just depend on him. “I don’t say it’s my band or my orchestra,” he explains. “It’s our group. We are all artists and we have to work together to learn about art and express it to others.” Seddon is also a member of a brass quintet, Talcott Brass, which has toured the U.S. and Europe. He lives in Shelby with his wife, Alana, who is the orchestral director at Viroqua High School, and their two sons, Peter, 14, and Paul, 6. If you go — What: UW-L Wind Ensemble concert Where: 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 11 When: Christ Episcopal Church, La Crosse, 111 Ninth St. N., La Crosse Admission: Free