NATCHITOCHES – The Annual Northwestern State University Saxfest will be held April 12-14.
The Forsyth Jazz Collective will perform at Maglieaux’s in Natchitoches on Wednesday, April 12 from 6-8:30 p.m. and will be joined by the NSU Jazz Combos.
On Thursday, April 13, the NSU Saxophone Studio Recital will hold a recital at 7:30 p.m. in Magale Recital Hall featuring all students in the NSU Saxophone Studio in solo and chamber performances.
Guest artists Arno Bornkamp and Kenneth Tse will present a guest recital in Magale Recital Hall at 7:30 p.m.
Bornkamp is a unique figure in the saxophone and classical music worlds. In his career, now spanning nearly 40 years, he has amazed the music world with his energetic and stylish interpretations, full of lyricism and passion. He believes in the saxophone as an instrument with an infinite amount of nuance and colors, reflecting the human soul with all its shadings of light and dark. Bornkamp is a natural storyteller on his instrument and offers a highly personal take in his interpretations of the music he plays.
Bornkamp’s saxophone style is strongly rooted in the 20th century French tradition. His primary teachers were, in addition to Ed Bogaard, the French saxophone legends Daniël Deffayet and Jean-Marie Londeix. Nonetheless, he was primarily influenced by the Dutch musical climate of the 1980s, a time when traditions were overthrown, dogmas were broken and classical music reached a huge audience. Bornkamp flourished greatly in this cultural climate, and together with Johan van der Linden, André Arends and Willem van Merwijk, he founded the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet (1982-2017). For an extended period, this quartet was one of the world’s greatest. One of their merits was opening the doors to make string quartet literature accessible to the saxophone quartet, such as the quartets by Debussy and Ravel, which they usually performed without sheet music. The Aurelia Quartet, later with Niels Bijl, Femke IJlstra and Juan Manuel Dominguez, has left a true legacy, which still serves as a source of inspiration for young quartets.
Widely recognized as one of the world’s leading classical saxophonists, Tse is certainly one of the instrument’s outstanding proponents on any saxophone aficionado’s short list. He burst on the scene in 1996 as the winner of the prestigious New York Artists International Award, which resulted in an acclaimed debut recital at Carnegie Hall, after which he was hailed as “a young virtuoso” by the New York Times. The Alex Award from the National Alliance for Excellence led to another Carnegie Hall performance. These are but two of the multitude of awards that Tse has garnered in less than a decade and a half. Since then, he has been a frequent soloist on five continents, including solo appearances with the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Des Moines Symphony, United States Navy Band, Slovenia Army Band, La Armónica Band of Bunol, Spain, Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra and Hong Kong Sinfonietta among others. He is frequent featured artist at events such as the triennial World Saxophone Congress and North American Saxophone Alliance conferences. He has also been a guest clinician at conferences hosted by the California Band Directors’ Association, Iowa Bandmaster’s Association, and the Midwest International Band and Orchestra Clinics. Prestigious universities and conservatories worldwide, such as Sydney Conservatory, Moscow Conservatory and Paris Conservatory have invited him to give master classes. He was recently a judge, representing the USA, at the 6th Adolphe Sax International Competition in Dinant, Belgium.
Tse has been an active recording artist since his first CD for Crystal Records at age 23. His discography now includes 23 CDs—presenting a wide variety of saxophone repertoire, most of it new, some with assisting artists—on Crystal Records, RIAX records, Jeanné records, Enharmonic records, Arizona University Recordings and MSR Classics.
For more information, contact Dr. Paul Forsyth at forsythp@nsula.edu.
