Gary Green, professor and director of bands at the Frost School of Music, teases out a few smiles from anxious students in the Frost Wind Ensemble, who are rehearsing for their big debut in Carnegie Hall. “It needs to move kinda funky,” Green quips. “You guys didn’t think I could find a funky tune. You thought I was too old.”

The Wind Ensemble belted out the world premiere of that funky tune, Wolf Rounds, in a program titled Performing the Past, Premiering the Future at Carnegie Hall on March 29. It was the first time in the Frost School’s 80-year history that a student ensemble performed at the hallowed venue, and it was the first time Green had conducted there.

Written by Grammy- and Pulitzer Prize-winning orchestral composer Christopher Rouse, Wolf Rounds is a 17-minute piece that moves in the circular, progressive way in which wolves stalk their prey. It is the seventh new work commissioned through the Abraham Frost Commission Series, an endowment established in 1996 by UM life trustee Phillip Frost in honor of his late father. And although Rouse composed it specifically for winds, there’s nothing airy about it.

“Rouse is a percussionist. He uses a vast amount of instruments, everything from thick pieces of wood to brake drums hit by hammers,” says Catherine Rand, the Frost School’s 2007 Outstanding Graduate Student. She wrote her Doctor of Musical Arts in conducting thesis on the significance of Wolf Rounds and the process leading up to its world premiere. “Wind band is such a young field. Writing this paper has opened my eyes to getting more composers to write for our genre.”

Rouse, who turned down Green’s initial proposal a few years ago, noted that the “magnificent performance” will be one that he’ll long remember. “I was very touched by everyone’s dedication in preparing the work, and the results spoke for themselves,” Rouse says.