The Scottish Society of the Louisiana Highlands invites members and friends to join together in celebrating, in words and music, the immortal memory of Robert Burns and Scotland’s heritage. The cocktail hour begins at 5:00 and the haggis will be piped in at 6:00. Next, the "Address to A Haggis" is given after which dinner, toasts and dancing to music provided by Celtic musicians, Emerald Accent follows. A silent auction will be presented throughout the evening. This formal event is open to all who like to laugh, hear the pipes, or wear a tartan! Tickets are by reservation only; see the link on our website.

Lecture to Feature Plans, Plants and People Making a Difference at SFA Gardens
SFA Gardens will host the monthly Theresa and Les Reeves Lecture Series at 7 p.m. December 12th in the Ina Brundrett Conservation Education Building at the Pineywoods Native Plant Center.

Our very own Dr. David Creech, Director of SFA Gardens, will discuss “Plans, Plants and People Making a Difference at SFA Gardens.”

Creech has been at SFA since September 1978. He received his bachelor’s degree in horticulture from Texas A&M University in 1970, a master’s degree in horticulture from Colorado State University in 1972, and his doctoral degree from Texas A&M in 1978. After a long career in teaching, Creech retired in 2007 but returned to direct SFA Gardens in a part-time position.

Creech’s research interests are varied and include fruits and vegetables, evaluating ornamentals for East Texas, conservation horticulture with endangered plants, salinity studies and, most recently, investigating the potential of kiwifruit as a specialty crop for Texas.

Since 1981, Creech has accumulated a long list of international work in Pakistan, Guatemala, Mexico, Nepal, Israel and China. In the last 21 years, he has undertaken more than 25 consultancies in China, working with the Blueberry Improvement Program and Taxodium Improvement Program at the Nanjing Botanical Garden, as well as connecting with the new plants arena in the China nursery and landscape industries. He is an advocate of increasing forest cover and smart use of land and plant resources.

The Theresa and Les Reeves Lecture Series is held the second Thursday of each month and includes a plant raffle after the program. The lecture is free and open to the public, and donations to the lecture series fund are always appreciated.

Parking is available at the PNPC, 2900 Raguet St., or Raguet Elementary School, 2708 Raguet St.

For more information, call (936) 468-4129 or email sfagardens@sfasu.edu.

The Centenary Percussion Ensemble presents its Fall Concert on Friday, November 22 at 7:30 p.m. in Anderson Auditorium in the Hurley School of Music. The ensemble is under the direction of Chandler Teague and is free and open to the public. Music by Chick Corea, Alan Hovhaness, Elliot del Borgo, selected Christmas carols, and a few surprises, will make for an exciting evening of percussion music, from serious drumming to subtle sound colors. Call the Hurley School of Music at 869-5235 for further details.

“Treasures from the File Cabinets” features a number of gems in the college band music collection including great marches by American composers John Philip Sousa, "the March King,” and the iconoclastic Charles Ives. "Bullets and Bayonets" from 1918 is one of Sousa's many tuneful marches contrasted by Ives's "Country Band March" from 1904, a raucous and often hilarious take on 1890s New England holidays when Ives would hear different marching bands music colliding as they approached the town square. The march is replete with various quotes from folk songs such as “London Bridge,” “The Girl I Left Behind,” “The British Grenadier,” and others emerging from the texture of a lively march tune.

Louisiana native Julie Giroux's moving tribute to a friend, "One Life Beautiful," is a strikingly evocative recent work from 2009, while music from the 1985 western film "Silverado" features the horn and trumpet sections of the wind ensemble. Dutch composer Johan de Meij's "Gandalf" from his "Lord of the Rings" Symphony is an epic salute to Tolkien's fantasy classic, while Alexander Borodin's seldom heard "Symphony No. 2" is a challenging vintage Russian transcription from 1940.

The program also features works by J. S. Bach (Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring) and Edvard Grieg (Funeral March) and concludes with Gustav Holst's Second Suite in F from 1911, one of the foundational works of wind band literature. The piece is based on several folk songs, two of which are hair-raisingly combined in the final movement, "Fantasia on the Dargason.”

“There is so much great music out there that it is difficult to choose,” said director Hundemer. “Often, I rummage through our band library that my predecessors have assembled, and much wonderful and inspiring music pops out at me, some of which I know and some I've never heard before. My colleagues in the ensemble also often suggest pieces that we perform. This concert's program is a combination of suggestions and items I come across in our file cabinets, hence ‘Treasures from the File Cabinets!’”

The Centenary Wind Ensemble consists of students, faculty, alumni, and area musicians and educators.