UMBC Wind Ensemble — Profit and Peril

Join us as the UMBC Wind Ensemble presents Profit and Peril, which explores through music the human cost of progress across American history and lived experience. The event features the UMBC Camerata (Lulu Mwangi, director) and guest vocal soloist Janice Jackson of UMBC. From the American Revolution to the rise of artificial intelligence, the program traces how systems of power—political, industrial, and technological—shape and challenge human lives. The performed works humanize industrial labor, the Great Migration, and the lasting impact of racial and economic injustice. Across wind ensemble, choral, and vocal works—including music from Hamilton—the program centers the individuals living within these systems, ultimately affirming dignity, resilience, and human connection as the true measure of progress.

The UMBC Wind Ensemble, directed by Brian Kaufman, has pioneered a new vision for the wind ensemble in the 21st century. Performing wind ensemble classics, world premieres of contemporary works, spoken word pieces, popular songs, collaboratively composed originals, and music with cultural influences from around the world, the group regularly collaborates with community partners to engage audiences in pressing social issues through music, multimedia, and discussion. The UMBC Wind Ensemble has celebrated performances with internationally recognized guest artists including Glee pianist and music director Brad Ellis, Emmy-nominated composer and genre-bending violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain, The American Brass Quintet, singer-songwriter Diana Lawrence, Canadian Brass veteran Joe Burgstaller, international tuba artist Oystein Baadsvik, Cleveland Orchestra trombonist Shachar Israel, Marine Band co-principal oboe Trevor Mowry, former Marine Band clarinetist Randall Riffle, and UMBC Professor of Violin Airi Yoshioka. The ensemble seeks to regularly commission and perform music by living composers. Their premiere performance of Samuel Winnie’s Nightfall in Lothlorien was a finalist for the 2016 American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award. Filtering, the ensemble’s debut album released on the Albany label in April 2022, has had radio play nationally and has been hailed by American Record Guide as a “fine album” featuring “energetic and committed playing by this wind band.”