In the Fall of 2002, I was asked by Rudi Schlegel at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to write “an American Pomp and Circumstance”. He was referring of course to the beautiful concert march by English composer Edward Elgar, played at nearly every graduation ceremony in the country.

My answer to this daunting challenge is “...this noble company”, a processional for orchestra whose title, like Elgar’s, is drawn from Shakespeare’s Othello. The piece was written during a time of great wartime finan...