Last month I gave the premiere of two new works which now have recordings online! The first was Jeremy Wagner's ...auf einer grunen aue... for two baritone saxophones which I played with Alex Richards at the CMW concert in the Ted Mann Concert Hall, and the second was Ted Moore's is himself no more for tenor saxophone and super collider which was on the RenegadeEnsemble concert series Into the Woods at Studio Z!

Alex Richards and I will be playing a concert together next Saturday, May 11 at 2PM at the University of Minnesota. It will feature Louder than Words by Don Freund, Caravan by Tanya Anisimova and Dark Rain by Andy Scott. Dark Rain, a double concerto for two saxophones and wind ensemble, will be performed in a reduced version for piano, bass and drum set! Leah Siltberg (p), Lewis Heald (b), and Jeremy Johnston (d) will be helping us out!

Next Friday, May 10, I will be playing DMA recital #3! Come check out some great saxophone music including Jennifer Higdon's Sonata, Carlos Gonzalo Guzman-Munoz's Monologo en Tiempo de Joropo, Mark Oliveiro's Baayami: From the Sky, and David Biedenbender's Images. I will be assisted by the talented Jieun Kim on piano!

The U of M Saxophone Quartet will be doing a performance at Schmitt Music in Edina with Dr. Rousseau playing some fun saxophone quartet and quintet arrangements! Don't miss this! U of M Saxophone Quartet all play E. Rousseau Mouthpieces!

The University of Minnesota Saxophone Quartet (Benjamin Cold, David Kahn, Alexander Richards, and myself) will be guest soloists with the University of Minnesota Wind Ensemble, conducted by Craig Kirchhoff, performing William Bolcom's Concerto Grosso this week! Don't miss out! The concert is FREE!

RenegadeEnsemble is pleased to present our spring concert featuring several "woodsy" works, including two premieres, and will showcase Twin Cities artist Linnea Doyle creating a painting live alongside and in reaction to the music.

Hard Fairy by Graham Fitkin
Hens by Chris Gables
Lunch with a Nun by James Holdman
Black by Katherine Bergman
is himself no more by Ted Moore

RenegadeEnsemble includes:
Alyssa Anderson, voice & spoken word
David Birrow, percussion
Kyle Hutchins, saxophone
Christopher Raddatz, clarinet
Stanley Rothrock II, piano
Joseph Spoelstra, guitar

Also joining us will be guest pianist Peter John.

Reserve your tickets HERE!

Later this week, I will be heading to Minot, ND to perform at the NASA Region 3 Conference at Minot State University! Saturday 4/20 the University of Minnesota Saxophone Quartet will perform Ida Gotkovsky's Quatuor Mvt VI. Finale and Michael Torke's July! Then on Sunday 4/21, I will be playing a solo recital featuring Carlos Gonzalo Guzman-Munoz's Monologo en Tiempo de Joropo and Mark Oliveiro's Baayami: From the Sky! Hope to see some familiar faces there!

Come out next Tuesday and hear some great contemporary music by Luciano Berio and several premieres by student composers! I will be premiering a new work for two baritone saxophones by Jeremy Wagner!

Now that it is a few weeks after my trip to Europe, I thought I would take some time to post pictures! Overall, it was a great time! I had the opportunity to meet and reconnect with some wonderful people and hear many excellent performances.

A few days before my flight to Scotland, I found out that there was a SNAFU with my hotel reservations, and of course St. Andrew's was completely booked up for the Congress by this point, which led me to use CouchSurfing.org to find other accommodations. I was lucky enough to find some local university students in St. Andrews who let me crash with them for the duration of the Congress. It was a fantastic experience meeting them and their friends, getting a little of the local culture in, and saved a little money to boot. Plus the walk to the events was considerably less than if I stayed in the hotel. It was absolutely fantastic, and I would definitely use CouchSurfing.org again in my travels. 

My entire week at the Congress, I saw less than 30 performances, even though there were hundreds happening. It would be interesting to know how many saxophones were in that town during that week :). 

One of the very cool things I learned about at this Congress was a new instrument called the Karlax. Philippe Geiss did a lecture and demonstration over the instrument which was very interesting! It is not a wind instrument, but rather completely digital. It has many buttons, is motion sensored, and even twists in the middle, all of which can be programmed to do virtually anything you like. I recommend checking this thing out. You can visit the Karlax website here. During the lecture, I had the pleasure of going up on stage to try the instrument out. It was programmed to manipulate the video from Jacob TV's Garden of Love while Cliff Leaman played the saxophone part. 

My recital took place on Thursday July 15th in an amazing medieval chapel that was several hundred years old. You can take a virtual tour of the space here. I performed the world premiere of Mark Oliveiro's new piece Bayaami: From the Sky which I wrote about in a previous blog post. I also performed a wonderful little piece titled Monologo en Tiempo de Joropo by Colombian composer Carlos Gonzalo Guzman-Munoz. A little over a year ago, my wonderful AVIDduo partner Brittany Primavera traveled to South American to teach and perform in Le Ceja, Colombia and the area. She was encouraged (read: harassed) to bring back some Colombian saxophone music with her, and this was undoubtedly one of my favorites. I have since gotten to know Carlos a little bit, and he is a great person and composer and I am delighted to have had the opportunity to give his piece its first performance outside of Colombia! If anyone is interested in performing either of these piece, please contact me and I will put you in touch with the right people :)

Aside from the week long saxophone extravaganza, St. Andrew's was a pretty awesome town! 

An all around great time. I wish I had gotten to see more of Edinburgh, but after the last day of the Congress I flew to Prague, CZ where I met up with Brittany for AVIDduo shenanigans... More on that to come.   

New commission finished! Recently, my wonderful duo partner, EunHye Grace Choi, and I received a grant from the Co-Op Press fund to record a CD together this next spring. It will be a recording of American saxophone sonatas by William Albright, Sy Brandon, David Biedenbender, and Jennifer Higdon. The piece by Sy Brandon was written especially for Grace and myself. It is a fun, light-hearted sonata for the tenor saxophone and piano called Sonata "Funtasies". It was just recently completed and if you are interested in checking it out, Dr. Brandon posted it on his composing blog. To read about the piece in detail and his process of composing it, you can check out the blog here. You can also just view the score and listen to a midi-realized recording here. We are definitely looking forward to premiering it this upcoming Fall!