By Daniel Buckwalter
(#CommonManAtTheSymphony)

Thump … thump thump. Thump … thump thump goes the timpani and bass drum along with the gong splashing its harmonic overtones with dramatic crashes that are at once jolting as they are familiar.

It was all I could do to stay seated, not to stand, raise my hands to the sky, and declare, “Finally, it’s about me! Bless Aaron Copland!”

Fanfare for the Common Man was one of six selections played in a program titled “Fanfares for the Common Man and the Uncommon Woman” on Sept. 24 in Hult Center’s Soreng Theater, the opening concert for the Eugene Symphony Orchestra’s 2026-27 season.

Under the direction of artistic director and conductor Alex Prior, the program repeated on Sept. 25 at the Florence Events Center and spotlighted 14 brass players from the symphony accompanied by four percussionists.

And it was an elegant beginning to the season, also featuring fanfares and funeral marches from composers Joan Tower (with her own answer to Copland’s piece), Anton Bruckner, Edvard Grieg, Henri Tomasi and Antonín Dvořák.

Yet it was Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man that drew me in. Program notes indicated that the Eugene Symphony Orchestra last played this piece in 2012 under the direction of Marin Alsop. That’s too long of a dry spell.

I have grown somewhat detached from any nation’s anthem. I look more for the inner spirit, not a flag, and Fanfare for the Common Man, a truly theatrical piece of music, resonates with me more today than it ever has. I am always still when I hear it played.

Composed during United States’ involvement in World War II, Common Man was Copland’s answer to Cincinnati Symphony conductor Eugene Goossens’ call for fanfares supporting the war effort.

Copland instead focused on ordinary men honoring their country in their own hardscrabble way, the workers who toiled then and still now largely in anonymity. In my mind’s eye, I see the black-and-white photos of gritty coal and steel workers. Or sometimes, it’s a black-and-white photo of a farmer at sunset overlooking his land. I see the proletariat doing the Lord’s work.

Many years would pass, and Tower’s reply to Copland’s siren call to the common man — Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman — was commissioned by the Houston Symphony in 1986 and dedicated to former Eugene Symphony director Marin Alsop. It was last played by the Eugene Symphony in 2012 under the Alsop’s own direction.

Tower, now in her late 80s, gives deep respect to Copland, but Uncommon Woman is more fluid, the first of six fanfares she composed to celebrate the complex roads that women take to challenge assumptions, take risks, and forge new paths. It stands on its own and is beautiful to listen to.

Prior noted to the audience near the end of the performance how uniquely difficult the program was, because most of the pieces played were arrangements for brass instead of the original scores that feature string players. Yet the brass ensemble nailed everything presented to them, and because this portion of the symphony was small, I will simply — and happily — name them all.

On horns, Margarite Waddell, Frances Pinkham, John Schuster, Jenessa Hettwer, and Dan Meier. On trumpet, Hayato Tanaka, Karlee Navarro, Jeffrey Snyder, and Stephen Dunn. On trombone, Henry Henniger, Bailey Schmidt, and Keven Kraus. The tuba players were Michael Grose and James Kuzmic. Ian Kerr was on timpani, and the percussionists were Austin Cernosek, Brian Gardiner, and Thomas Snedeker.