Part of the North American Saxophone Alliance Region IX Conference, Edmonton 2009

Sunday, 15 February 2009, 8:00 P.M.
Convocation Hall, University of Alberta
Tickets $15 (adults) and $10 (seniors and students) available at the door

Music by: George Andrix, Alex Eddington, Thom Golub, Piotr Grella-Możejko, Jacobus Kloppers, Jacek Sobieraj, Charles Stolte

Soloists: Allison Balcetis, Julia Nolan, Jeremy Brown, Glen Gillis, Allen Harrington, Po-Yuan Ku, Charles Stolte

The University of Alberta, The King’s University College and Edmonton Composers Concert Society are pleased to present the Region 9 Conference of the North American Saxophone Alliance. For its penultimate concert in the New Music Alberta Concert Series for the current season, the Edmonton Composers’ Concert Society will be presenting a rare treat for local concert audiences — seven Canadian concerti for saxophone solo and full chamber orchestra. The concert will be presented as part of the NASA Region 9 Conference on Sunday, February 15 at 8:00 P.M. at Convocation Hall in the Old Arts Building on the University of Alberta campus.

The composers of the works chose the soloists through a Western Canada-wide competition. These artists will be accompanied by the Edmonton Chamber Orchestra under the direction of the outstanding Polish conductor and composer Maestro Jacek Rogala.

The saxophone is so closely associated with jazz music that it is the only instrument on the cover of the Oxford Dictionary of Jazz Music. And yet, it was created as an instrument for classical music and is rarely heard in its original capacity today. However, from Sunday to Tuesday, 15-17 February, 2009, the classical saxophone will be front-and-centre in Edmonton as over one-hundred classical saxophonists from across Western Canada, from Vancouver to Winnipeg, (and one from Switzerland) converge on the University of Alberta’s Fine Arts Building and Convocation Hall to celebrate their marvellous instrument in a full slate of performances, lessons, lectures and concerts by professionals and students alike.

A full evening of new saxophone concerti for saxophone and orchestra by Edmonton and Albertan composers is an exciting and unique event in Edmonton’s cultural life. The musical style of the new works ranges from jazz to world music to Romantic to richly atonal and is a trip through the ears and minds of seven remarkable local composers.

Maestro Jacek Rogala (born in 1966 in Brzeg, Poland) is an award winning composer and conductor, having had performances of his works across Europe and North America. He is also a very highly respected educator (specialising in music for children) and a writer, having in 2000 published in English the internationally acclaimed Polish Music in the 20th Century (Cracow: PWM-Polish Music Edition).

As a conductor, he has directed orchestras in Poland and abroad (Austria, Canada, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain) in the premières of many works by Polish and foreign composers, often given during important festival events such as Warsaw Autumn, Silesian Days of Contemporary Music, The Grażyna Bacewicz Festival and many others. As well, he has made numerous recordings of music by the (predominantly) Polish Romantic and modern composers, Grażyna Bacewicz, Mieczyslaw Karłowicz, Józef Koffler, Paweł Mykietyn and Tadeusz Wielecki, to name only a few.

Jacek Rogala holds M.Mus. degrees in Composition (1990, under Prof. Grażyna Pstrokonska-Nawratil) and Conducting (1992, under Maestro Marek Pijarowski) from the Wrocław Academy of Music. Between 1991 and 1992 he was the Assistant Principal Conductor of the Wrocław Opera, and during the 1993/1994 season the Distinguished Visiting Conductor with the famous Capella Bydgostiensis. In 1996, on an Artur Rodziński Scholarship, he furthered his education at the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra in the US. In 1997 Maestro Rogala was a laureate of the International Conductors’ Competition “Pedro da Costa de Freitas Branco” in Lisbon. As of the 2001/2002 season, Maestro Jacek Rogala has become the Artistic Director of the Oskar Kolberg Philharmonic Orchestra in Kielce, Poland. Virtually unanimous opinion agrees he has transformed the orchestra into one of the country’s leading symphony ensembles, praised for its visionary programming.

Tickets for this unique and exciting event are general admission and are available at the door for $20 general and $15 student or senior.

For information contact the conference organisers: Dr. Charles Stolte, William H. Street, Allison Balcetis

To view the full schedule of events visit www.nasaregion92009.ca
Explore the North American Saxophone Alliance at www.saxalliance.org