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“The President’s Own” U.S. Marine Band returned to the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park with a special program that Director Lt. Col. Jason K. Fettig built around the four classical elements: fire, water, earth, and air. Music is often the representation and inspiration of the world both around and within us and this concert explores the classical elements in classical music, from fire in Igor Stravinsky’s Fireworks to water in Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Suite from On the Waterfront, and earth with Darius Milhaud’s depiction of the genesis of the planet itself in La Création du monde. These elements are all tied together by the very wind that powers this grand acoustic ensemble called the concert band. While the ancient Greeks first presented the concept of the four elements, the Eastern Asian cultures transformed the idea into a belief in the transmission of energy between elements, to include wood and metal. These elements are represented in grand fashion in Jennifer Higdon’s virtuosic Percussion Concerto.