The Fredonia Wind Ensemble, under the direction of Dr. Paula Holcomb, will present its first concert of the season on Saturday, Oct. 24 at 8 p.m. in King Concert Hall.
The program features Mark Engebretson's Concerto for Soprano Saxophone and Wind Ensemble with guest soloist Susan Fancher, and "Hemispheres" by Joseph Turrin, a work commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic in commemoration of Kurt Masur's tenure as Music Director. The concert event is free and open to the public.
Ms. Fancher is an internationally-recognized concert saxophonist known for her deep, poetic musical interpretations. Her career has featured hundreds of concerts internationally as a soloist and as the member of chamber music ensembles, including the Red Clay, Amherst, Vienna and Rollin’ Phones saxophone quartets. She has performed in many of the world’s leading venues including Sala São Paulo, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, Filharmonia Hall in Warsaw and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, just to name a few. Tours have taken her to Albania, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Thailand and throughout the U.S. Her newest CD release “Of Erthe and Air: Susan Fancher and friends play music of Hilary Tann” by Arizona University Records features a live performance of Tann’s soprano saxophone concerto with the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra. She is an artist clinician for the Selmer and Vandoren companies, and teaches saxophone at Duke University.
Mr. Engebretson is Professor of Composition and Electronic Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). He is the recipient of a Barlow Commission (for “Bent Frequency”), North Carolina Artist Fellowship in Composition (for the Concerto for Soprano Saxophone and Orchestra), a Fulbright Fellowship for studies in France, and has received major commissions from Harvard University’s Fromm Music Foundation (“Acrylic Waves”), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (“They Said: sinister resonance”), the Thomas S. Kenan Center for the Arts (“Deliriade”) and the Barlow Foundation. He is the founder of the UNCG New Music Festival.
Engebretson’s creative work is driven by melody, timbre, virtuosity, clear and balanced formal structure, the integration of new media, multiple levels of associations, and a desire for fresh, engaging musical expression. Recent work has included strong overtones of pop music and creative intersections with written texts. He taught composition at the University of Florida, music theory at the Fredonia School of Music and 20th century music history at the Eastman School of Music. He studied at the University of Minnesota, the Conservatoire de Bordeaux as a Fulbright Scholar, and Northwestern University, where he received a Doctor of Music degree. At Northwestern he studied composition with M. William Karlins, Pauline Oliveros, Marta Ptaszynska, Michael Pisaro, Stephen Syverud and Jay Alan Yim and saxophone with Frederick Hemke. His teachers in France were Michel Fuste-Lambezat and Jean-Marie Londeix.
