ROCK ISLAND, ILLINOIS (February 12, 2024) — Augustana College will host the annual Shockingly Modern Saxophone Festival February 24. The event, featuring guest artist Kyle Hutchins of Virginia Tech, will be held at Bergendoff Hall, 3520 7th Ave, Rock Island, Illinois. 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.
Schedule
All events will be held in Larson Hall inside Bergendoff Hall.
10:30AM Concert with members of the Augustana Saxophone Studio
11AM Saxophone master class with Kyle Hutchins
2:30PM concert with Dr Randall Hall
3:30PM Guest artist Q&A with Kyle Hutchins
7:30PM Concert with Kyle Hutchins
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.
Hutchinson 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.
