Robert Boudreau, 1927-2024

I just heard the sad news that we've lost Maestro Robert Austin Boudreau, whose American Wind Symphony Orchestra was one of the most outrageously ambitious musical projects of the last century.

In addition to commissioning a vast body of work for the idiosyncratic instrumentation of the "wind symphony" (NOT "concert band," but rather an orchestra of obbligato woodwinds, brass, percussion, etc., sans string section or saxophones), Boudreau also commissioned a barge—the Point–Counterpoint II, pictured above—from the great architect Louis Kahn, to sail America's waterways, dock for an audience, and transform into a bandshell to perform open-air concerts. (It also contains a floating art gallery.)

I've read that the Point–Counterpoint II—which was saved from the scrapheap by arts lovers and activists including Yo-Yo Ma—now has a permanent home in Philadelphia, but Boudreau's most enduring legacy is that massive body of works commissioned from a diverse array of men and women, celebrated and obscure, living on all six inhabited continents. Here's one of those commissions, Hymnos (1972) by Ivana Loudová:

Robert Boudreau died on the Fourth of July. He was 97 years old.