Check out the joy of sax at Augustana
Augustana College will host the annual Shockingly Modern Saxophone Festival Saturday, Feb. 24.
The daylong event, featuring guest artist Kyle Hutchins of Virginia Tech, will be held at Bergendoff Hall, 3520 7th Ave, Rock Island. All events are free and open to the public.
The festival also will feature performances from Augustana faculty and the Augustana College Saxophone Studio.
The festival is an annual event that celebrates new and experimental music for saxophone. It features music that explores the nearly unlimited potential of the saxophone through new composition, improvisation, extended performance techniques, microtonality, electronic music, multimedia and other experimental elements.
The event is led by Randall Hall, Augustana music professor, who is internationally active as a performer and clinician, and has given concerts throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, including concerts at the Karnatic Lab (Amsterdam), Logos Foundation (Belgium), Hundred Years Gallery (London), Werstatt für improvisierte Musik (Zürich), Yantai Music Festival (China), Zeitgeist Gallery (Boston), Center for New Music (Iowa City), Electronic Music Midwest (Chicago), Outside the Box Festival (Carbondale), the Image-Movement-Sound Festival (Rochester), the Weirdtown Music Festival (Rock Island) and the Electro Acoustic Juke Joint (Mississippi).
He has given lectures and master-classes on the aesthetics and techniques of new music at institutions around the world, including Harvard University, Cornell University, the Eastman School of Music, and New England Conservatory,
Hutchins, an internationally acclaimed performing artist and improviser, has taught at Virginia Tech since 2016, where he is the assistant professor of practice and director of the New Music + Technology Festival at the Institute of Creativity, Arts, and Technology.
In addition to recording more than two dozen albums and performing in all five continents, Hutchison has received awards and grants from Downbeat, New Music USA, The American Prize, American Protégé International Competition, Music Teachers National Association, Mu Phi Epsilon Foundation and others.
He is a member of 113 (One Thirteen), a collective of composers and performers of experimental new music who curate concerts, educational programs, festivals, seminars, and master-classes around the world; Binary Canary, a woodwind-laptop improvisation duo alongside electronicist Ted Moore; and the Roanoke-based surf rock/exotica band Cinémathèque.
Hutchins earned his doctor of musical arts and master’s degree from the University of Minnesota, and bachelor’s of music in performance and bachelor’s of music education from the University of North Texas.
The Feb. 24 schedule of events (all in Larson Hall inside Bergendoff Hall) will be:
10:30 a.m. — Concert with members of the Augustana Saxophone Studio
11 a.m. — Saxophone master class with Kyle Hutchins
2:30 p.m. — Concert with Randall Hall
3:30 p.m. — Guest artist Q&A with Kyle Hutchins
7:30 p.m. — Concert with Hutchins
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