Saturday I September 17, 2022 I 4:00 pm Faye Spanos Concert Hall Pacific Woodwind Day 3rd Performance I 2022–23 Academic Year I Conservatory of Music I University of the Pacific Pacific Woodwind Day Pacific Tiger Ensemble Vu Nguyen, conductor Brittany Trotter, flute Kyle Bruckmann, oboe Patricia Shands, clarinet Ricardo Martinez, saxophone Nicolasa Kuster, bassoon
Splinter Reeds
Kyle Bruckmann, oboe Bill Kalinkos, clarinet Nicole Roman, saxophone Jeff Anderle, bass clarinet Dana Jessen, bassoon
Ayevwiomo Dance
Vu Nguyen, conductor
Kyle Bruckmann, oboe; Bill Kalinkos, clarinet; Nicole Roman, saxophone; Jeff Anderle, bass clarinet; Dana Jessen, bassoon
Splinter (2014)
Brittany Trotter, flute; Kyle Bruckmann, oboe; Nicolasa Kuster, bassoon
ColombianMauro’sNataliaSabrosoSaturdayDances(Latin)Latin
Patricia Shands, clarinet; Ricardo Martinez, saxophone
Splinter Reeds
Vu Nguyen, conductor
arr. A. Cooper/A. Pugh Fred MauricioOnovwerosuoke(b.1960)MurciaBedoya(b.1976)arr.R.MartinezMarcMellits(b.1966)
CONCERT PROGRAM I SEPTEMBER 17, 2022 I 4:00 PM
In the Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt Suite No.1, op.46 (1876)
The Magnificent Seven (1960)
Edvard Elmerarr.(1843–1907)GriegM.OrrissBernstein(1922–2004)
Three Pieces for Woodwind Trio Wedding Processional Mshila (Guiding Spirits/Lullaby)
In addition to his academic career, Mr. Nguyen recently retired as an officer in the Air National Guard (ANG) where he was the commander/conductor of the ANG Band of the West Coast. He was responsible for all activities of this fortymember squadron, including participation in ceremonies, parades, concerts, and other public performances. The Band of the West Coast is one of five ANG Bands in the United States and covers an eight-state area of responsibility that includes California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
Vu Nguyen is an associate professor of music and director of bands at the University of the Pacific. He conducts the Symphonic Wind Ensemble and Concert Band, and he teaches courses in conducting and music education. Mr. Nguyen maintains an active schedule as a clinician and has served as guest conductor with the United States Air Force Bands of the Golden West and Mid-America, as well as honor bands across the country. Ensembles under his direction have performed at state music educator conferences, at the Midwest Clinic, and at the College Band Directors National Association Conference.
A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Vu Nguyen holds degrees in conducting from the University of Washington and the University of Oregon, and a Bachelor of Music degree in music education from the University of the Pacific. Prior to his appointment at Pacific, he served in similar roles at the University of Connecticut, University of Indianapolis, and Washington University in St. Louis, in addition to being a visiting conductor with the Indiana University Concert Band. He began his teaching career in the San Ramon Valley Unified School District.
CONDUCTOR BIO
PERFORMER BIOS
In demand as a clinician, Ms. Trotter frequently performs, teaches, and serves as a guest lecturer at universities across California and the United States. Her recent appearances include those at Bowling Green State University, Tennessee Tech University, Virginia Tech University, University of North Carolina–Greensboro, Southwestern Oklahoma University, and Missouri Southern State University.
Equally versed in post-classical contemporary music, Ms. Trotter has performed contemporary works and presented workshops at festivals and conventions including the New Jersey Flute Fair, Kentucky Flute Fair, Florida Flute Association Convention, Rochester Flute Fair, Mid-Atlantic Flute Convention, and the National Flute Association (NFA) Convention where she was a featured soloist in the 2020 virtual summer series celebration concert series. Ms. Trotter has won prizes in competitions held by the Music Teachers National Association’s Woodwinds Young Artist Competition for the states of West Virginia (2017, 2016), Wyoming (2015, 2014), and Mississippi (2009) and was a semifinalist in the 2017 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.
Prizewinning flutist Brittany Trotter leads a diverse career as an educator, soloist, and collaborator. She is the assistant professor of flute and program director of woodwinds at the University of the Pacific’s Conservatory of Music in Stockton, California. Known for her versality and nuance, she performs in the flute sections of the Modesto Symphony Orchestra, Stockton Symphony, Johnstown Symphony Orchestra, Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra, and Colour of Music Festival Orchestra.
A recipient of the NFA’s 2020 Graduate Research Competition for her dissertation entitled Examining Music Hybridity and Cultural Influences in Valerie Coleman’s Wish Sonatine and Fanmi Imen, Ms. Trotter continues to actively study the merging of Western classical music, diverse culture, and modern popular music. She recently presented a lecture recital entitled “Flute & Hip Hop” as part of her artist residency with Unisound of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) and at the 2022 NFA Convention in Chicago.
Devoted to modeling engagement in the broader community, Ms. Trotter serves as co–program chair of the Mid-Atlantic Flute Convention, coordinator of the NFA’s Junior Soloist Competition, member of the development committee of the Umoja Flute Institute and the NFA’s career and artistic development committee, and publicity chair for the Flute New Music Consortium.
A native of Laurel, Mississippi, Ms. Trotter has received degrees from the University of Southern Mississippi (B.M., B.M.E.), University of Wyoming (M.M.), and West Virginia University (D.M.A., Certificate of University Teaching).
Kyle Bruckmann earned undergraduate degrees in music and psychology at Rice University in Houston, studying oboe with Robert Atherholt, serving as music director of campus radio station KTRU, and achieving academic honor as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He completed his Master of Music degree in 1996 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he studied oboe performance with Harry Sargous and contemporary improvisation with Ed Sarath.
Mr. Bruckmann’s current affiliations include Splinter Reeds, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Quinteto Latino, Eco Ensemble, sfSound, and the Stockton Symphony. He has premiered dozens of works as a soloist and within these ensembles, working in particularly close collaboration with composers such as Olivia Block, Linda Bouchard, Gabriela Lena Frank, Michael Gordon, JoséLuis Hurtado, Maija Hynninen, Sky Macklay, Paula Matthusen, Myra Melford, Amadeus Regucera, Theresa Wong, and Eric Wubbels. Thanks to his uncommon distinction as an improvising oboist, he has performed and/or recorded with Creative Music progenitors Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, and George Lewis, and he has worked extensively for bandleaders such as Andrew Raffo Dewar and Lisa Mezzacappa.
PERFORMER BIOS
Since moving to the Bay Area in 2003, Kyle Bruckmann has performed as a substitute with the San Francisco Symphony and most of the area’s regional orchestras while remaining active within an international community of experimental musicians and sound artists. From 1996 until his Western relocation, he was a fixture in Chicago’s thriving indie scene; long-term projects dating from that era include Wrack, the electro-acoustic duo EKG, and the artpunk monstrosity Lozenge.
Oboist and electronic musician Kyle Bruckmann tramples genre boundaries in widely ranging work as a composer/ performer, educator and New Music specialist. His creative output—extending from conservatory-trained foundations into gray areas encompassing free jazz, post-punk rock, and the noise underground—can be heard on more than one hundred recordings. Three decades of chameleonic gigging have found him performing in settings including the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Venice Biennale, CBGB, Berghain, a twelve-foot diameter bomb shelter, and dangling thirty feet in the air by a harness from a crane.
In 1994 Patricia Shands was a featured soloist for composer Luciano Berio’s presentation of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University. She has appeared at the music festivals of Interharmony and Spoleto (Italy), the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, Música no Museu (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Round Top, Chautauqua, Bear Valley, Bellingham, and the National Repertory Orchestra, as well as the Wellesley Composers Conference, the New Hampshire Music Festival, the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, and the April in Santa Cruz New Music Festival.
PERFORMER
Clarinetist Patricia Shands has appeared to popular and critical acclaim throughout the United States, South America, and Europe. Her performances have been applauded by the critics of such publications as the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, Il Giornale (Milan), Fanfare, and the American Record Guide.
A prizewinner in the 1987 Concert Artists Guild Competition, Ms. Shands has collaborated in chamber music performances with many of the finest musicians of today. She currently is a member of the Trois Bois Wind Trio and the Pacific Arts Woodwind Quintet, and she was a founding member of the award-winning Block Ensemble. With these groups she has toured throughout the United States. Her vast orchestral experience has included serving as principal clarinet of the Sacramento Philharmonic, Modesto Symphony Orchestra, Stockton Symphony, Portland Symphony Orchestra, YMF Orchestra, and National Repertory Orchestra, along with substitute work with the Houston Symphony and Los Angeles Cham ber Orchestra. BIOS
Ricardo Martinez is assistant professor of practice in saxophone at the University of the Pacific’s Conservatory of Music. He was selected as grand-prize winner of the 9th Plowman Chamber Music Competition and first-prize winner in the 2017 Chicago Woodwind Ensemble Competition. He has played concerts internationally in France, Scotland, and Japan and has performed at the International Saxophone Symposium, North American Saxophone Alliance, American Single Reed Summit, and World Saxophone Congress.
Having begun his saxophone studies in the Bay Area under David Henderson of Stanford University and William Trimble, Mr. Martinez earned degrees at the University of Minnesota, studying with saxophone virtuoso Eugene Rousseau, and in France at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Cergy-Pontoise, where he studied with Jean-Yves Fourmeau. He received the Conservatoire’s Médaille d’Or in saxophone and graduated with honors in chamber music. He later completed graduate work at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music under the guidance of Otis Murphy and studied with the esteemed Japanese saxophonist Nobuya Sugawa at the Hamamatsu International Wind Academy and Festival. As an educator, Mr. Martinez has served as associate instructor in saxophone at Indiana University and been invited to teach and perform at the Indiana University Summer Saxophone Academy, Stanford University, and CSU (California State University) Summer Arts. Mr. Martinez is an endorsing artist for Legere Reeds and BG France.
PERFORMER BIOS
Mr. Martinez has performed with Classical Tahoe, the California Symphony, the Evansville Philharmonic, and the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra and has recorded at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County. He has also been a featured soloist with the Mission Chamber Orchestra of San Jose, Stanford Summer Symphony, University of the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Indiana University Guitar Ensemble, and the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Cergy-Pontoise Wind Ensemble. A supporter of new music, Mr. Martinez frequently participates in consortiums, collaborates with composers, and has performed at the Society of Composers, Inc., and Midwest Composers Symposium. He serves as a clinician in Northern California and actively adjudicates solo and ensemble festivals with CMEA (California Music Educators Association) Bay Section.
Nicolasa Kuster began teaching bassoon at the University of the Pacific’s Conservatory of Music in Stockton, California, in the fall of 2008. In 2018, she became the associate dean of academic affairs. In addition to her two roles at Pacific, she enjoys a rich orchestral, chamber, and solo performing life around northern California and beyond. She also launched and leads the Meg Quigley Vivaldi Competition, a biennial competition for young women bassoonists from the Americas. This competition awards more than $30,000 in prizes at the exciting three-day Meg Quigley Bassoon Symposium, which is open to all.
PERFORMER BIOS
Ms. Kuster is principal bassoon of the Stockton Symphony and New Hampshire Music Festival orchestras, second bassoon (acting principal) of the Monterey Symphony, and performs on occasion with the San Diego Symphony, Sacramento Philharmonic, and others. Previous positions include the Wichita Symphony (also serving on the faculty of Wichita State University), the Tulsa Philharmonic Orchestra, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, and the Virginia Symphony. She spent six summer seasons performing and recording with the Spoleto Festival Orchestra in Italy and can be heard on the Chandos Label playing principal bassoon on Gian Carlo Menotti's operas and other works. She has enjoyed teaching and performing at many summer festivals and camps, including the Anchorage Music Festival; the Ameropa Chamber Music Festival in Prague, Czech Republic; the Sequoia Chamber Music Workshop in Arcata, California; the Marrowstone Festival in Bellingham, Washington; Bocal Majority and Operation O.B.O.E.; as well as the Pacific Music Camp in Stockton.
Nicolasa Kuster’s solo appearances with orchestra include performing Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Bassoon Concerto in the opening gala performance of the International Double Reed Society in 2013, Peter Schickele's Bassoon Concerto with the Stockton Symphony in 2015, multiple-city tours of Kazakhstan, as well as televised performances in Italy and Panama. She is the winner of the 1995 Chicago Musicians Club of Women's Solo Competition Farwell Award, which she won while a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago studying with the late Bruce Grainger, assistant principal bassoon of the Chicago Symphony. She is a double degree graduate from Oberlin College and Conservatory with a Bachelor of Music degree in bassoon performance and a Bachelor of Arts degree in religion. She was a student of George Sakakeeny and taught at Oberlin as his sabbatical replacement in the fall of 2002. Her solo album, Metamorphosis, can be found at NicolasaKuster.com.
PERFORMER BIOS
As a relatively new chamber music genre, the reed quintet is an evolutionary detour from the traditional woodwind quintet with the advantages of a more closely related instrument family. Splinter Reeds has explored the genre’s expansive possibilities in close work with such composers as Amadeus Regucera, Eric Wubbels, Sky Macklay, Paula Matthusen, Marc Mellits, Michael Gordon, Theresa Wong and Ken Ueno, while presenting North American premieres by Europeanbased composers Dai Fujikura, Matthew Shlomowitz, and Yannis Kyriakides, among others. Notable performances have included appearances at Time:Spans (NY), Music Current (Dublin, Ireland), Vancouver New Music, Frequency Series at Chicago’s Constellation, Festival of New American Music (Sacramento), Blue Sage Center for the Arts (Paonia, CO), and Indexical (Santa Cruz), as well as numerous academic institutions across the country.
Splinter Reeds is the West Coast’s first reed quintet, formed in 2013 with the coming together of five colleagues highly active in multiple facets of the New Music scene throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and internationally. The sum of their wide ranges of experience—in settings including free improvisation, electronic music, pop, punk, and metal as well as classical—has enabled them to rapidly zero in on a distinct aesthetic identity. Distinguishing themselves amongst even the relatively small number of professional reed quintets currently active worldwide, the ensemble is explicitly dedicated to cutting-edge composition and expanding the existing reed quintet repertoire through the collaborative development of new works by emerging and established composers.
1849 University Ave, Berkeley, CA 94703
Kline Music
Forrest Music–The Double Reed Specialist
Flute World of San Francisco
SPECIAL THANKS TO PACIFIC WOODWIND VENDORS
www.forrestsmusic.com
2200 Sutterville Rd, Sacramento, CA 95822 www.klinemusic.com
1500 Grant Ave, San Francisco, CA www.fluteworld.com
Sep. 23 | 7:30 pm
FOCM: Adaskin String Trio Faye Spanos Concert Hall
University Symphony Orchestra Faye Spanos Concert Hall
music.pacific.edu
Sep. 21| 7:30 pm
UPCOMING CONSERVATORY EVENTS
Ann Miller, violin Sonia Leong, piano Recital Hall
Sep. 24 | 7:30 pm
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Pacific Jazz Ensemble Faye Spanos Concert Hall
Faculty Recital
Sep. 18 | 2:30 pm