LJWorld.com

John Lynch has been pretty busy lately with interviews on classical radio stations.

Garden City. West Hartford, Conn. Roanoke, Va.

They all want to know about "Red Line Tango," the first major-label CD release ever for the KU Wind Ensemble, and the first in a new series of international CDs that attempts to catalog major contemporary band works.

"I'm just hoping there'll be a buzz around the country that there are exciting things happening in music at the University of Kansas," says Lynch, director of bands at KU. "We're hoping KU bands will be on everyone's minds and lips."

The CD was released last month by Naxos, which had more classical Grammy nominations this year than any other label.

The KU Wind Ensemble, the band department's premiere group, recorded the CD in April 2005 at the Lied Center with plans to use it for recruiting new students.

"As far as we knew, it was just a promotional thing," says Meredith Allen, a junior clarinet player from Shawnee. "We wanted to show these are the pieces our Wind Ensemble is playing. We had no idea it would be picked up by Naxos."

The connection with the label came when Lynch mentioned the recording session to Randall Foster, a KU graduate and son of longtime KU band director Robert Foster. Randall Foster works at Naxos headquarters in Franklin, Tenn.

David Gnojek/Special to the Journal-World

The KU Wind Ensemble, the premiere band at Kansas University, recorded a CD called "Red Line Tango" in April 2005 that was picked up by the national classical music label Naxos.

Not only did Naxos like the recording, executives there decided to start an entire CD series of band music based on it.

"The Kansas recording really helped (plant the seed), with Randall's initiative and having that recording of a great group doing new music that's sort of standard," says Mark Berry, national publicist for Naxos. "That was the spark plug for the series."

The KU recording includes seven tracks, most of which have a KU connection. It includes an arrangement by Lynch of the traditional hymn "Were You There?" Several pieces were commissioned or co-commissioned by KU.

The title track, "Red Line Tango," is by John Mackey and has become a modern standard in the wind ensemble world. The title refers to the song's build-up, which Mackey likens to red-lining a car engine.

Last month, Naxos also released "Music of Persichetti" by the winds of the London Symphony Orchestra. Other recordings in the series, to be released this month, are "Strike Up the Band," a compilation recorded by the Band of the Royal Swedish Air Force, and "Music by Giannini," recorded by the University of Houston Wind Ensemble.

"The purpose is to get on record the sort of standard repertoire of wind bands and concert bands," Berry says. "Now, that is woefully underrepresented."

KU didn't benefit financially from the recording, though Naxos did give the university around 200 CDs. And Lynch says company executives kept the door open for another KU recording, which - depending on how the current titles sell - could result in cash for the university.

And Allen, the clarinet player, says young instrumentalists can say they played on a major-label recording.

"It's the fact that we have so many aspiring musicians," she says," and now they have their names on the label, as well as the KU Wind Ensemble as a whole."