The Eastern Illinois Wind Symphony will meld its usual melodious notes into a rough, hardcore electric guitar that might surprise an audience expecting a classical performance.

During the dual concert, the Eastern Concert Band will file onto the stage with no idea where one piece will end. The concert will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday in the Dvorak Concert Hall of the Doudna Fine Arts Center as part of Celebration: A Festival of the Arts.

Danelle Larson, a music professor and the director of the Eastern Concert Band, said she is looking forward to the variety of music in the show.

“We will hopefully be playing something for everyone,” Larson said.

Larson said she is excited for the pieces in the program.

“We are doing a piece called ‘Streets and Inroad,’ which is very unusual,” Larson said. “Every person reads the same music, so it’s not standard traditional notation.”

During the piece, which was written by Timothy Broege, Larson said the students will play a line and then chose which one they want to play next.

“The way I explain it is it that it is like a ‘choose your own adventure’ story,” Larson said. “You get to pick which place to go, and it changes the ending. Students choose where to go in the piece next, so it’s never the same piece twice.”

Alan Sullivan, the interim director of bands and the director of the Panther Marching and Wind Symphony, said this concert will be the last concert for the symphony, the concert band, and himself.

Sullivan said the symphony will be playing a piece that is reminiscent of the memories of its composer, Scott McAllister.

“The composer grew up in Florida, and he took some of his experience growing up and focused his piece around that,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan said this piece is a four-movement work with each movement representing a different memory.

“In the first movement, the composer tries to musically replicate a tractor pull, so it’s loud,” Sullivan said.

The second movement is a version of a common folk song.

The third movement transforms the symphony into a pedal steal guitar.

“The whole effect of that piece is trying to get a wind band to sound like an electric guitar,” Sullivan said. “To emphasize that, he actually wrote an electric guitar part.”

The fourth movement represents the composer’s memory of a wrestling match.

The concert band will also have a group of volunteers that will take the stage with no preparation for a piece.

“We are doing a free play, which we did at a concert last semester,” Larson said. “A free play is a truly improvised piece.”

Larson said the students will not be able to practice or talk before the piece.

“We won’t even know who will be playing until right before, and they will literally be having a musical conversation,” Larson said. “They just start to play with no music, no notation; they haven’t practiced.”

Larson said they will also have a lot of special effects during the concert.

“The piece ‘Ghost Train’ is very challenging, but we are having fun with it because there are sound effects that make it sound like a train is passing by,” Larson said.

Larson said she is really excited to work with the students and to see how they do during the last performance.

“I’m looking forward to just having a great time with the students for our very last concert of the year and the wide variety of music,” Larson said.

Larson said this type of performance makes the students listen to each other and be open with their music, and she hopes audiences like it.

“The point is to allow the students to be creative and open about creativity in an ensemble setting,” Larson said. “Often it is the conductor that is telling the students what to do and how to play and makes all the decisions, so this gives the students a chance to make the decisions and truly express themselves.”

Samantha McDaniel can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].