As the United States celebrates its semiquincentennial, the UCLA Wind Ensemble opens its season with a program exploring America’s triumphs and tragedies. The concert opens with Robert Jager’s festive Esprit de Corps, written for “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band and based on the Marines’ Hymn. Eric Ewazen’s A Hymn for the Lost and the Living, written just months after 9/11, marks the 25th anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history. Sung by marching Revolutionary War soldiers, Chester, originally penned by 18th-century musician William Billings and set in theme-and-variations form by Pulitzer Prize winner William Schuman in the 1950s, was the de facto national anthem of its time. We honor the late H. Robert Reynolds (1934–2026), a true titan of wind band music, by playing his transcription of Morten Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium, which he guest conducted with the UCLA Wind Ensemble at Schoenberg Hall in November 2015. The program closes with Omar Thomas’s powerful Of Our New Day Begun, which quotes “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and was written in the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attack on Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C.