Concert saxophonist, avid chamber musician, and versatile music educator, Alyssa Hoffert has both performed and premiered new works for saxophone extensively throughout the United States and Europe, including appearances with the Liberty Wind Symphony, the Cleveland Winds, the University Circle Wind Ensemble, the Cleveland Institute of Music and Firelands Symphony Orchestras, and the National Collegiate Wind Ensemble under the baton of H. Robert Reynolds at Carnegie Hall. 

A staunch advocate of chamber music, Hoffert is a founding member of the Peroledi Duo with flutist Matthew Angelo, and soprano saxophonist and founding member of the La’Ventus Quartet, who recently garnered national recognition as prize winners of the 2014 'American Prize in Chamber Ensemble Performance'. 

Hoffert has also been a prizewinner of many competitions and fellowships, including a recipient of the Art of Wind Band Conducting fellowship at the University of Minnesota, a selected member of the Technology in Music Education (TI:ME) Leadership Academy, an artist residency at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute, and prestigious fellowships from the Huntington Beebe Foundation and the Cité Internationale Universitaire (CUIP) to pursue studies in contemporary music performance and literature in Paris, France.

Hoffert holds an MM in Saxophone Performance from the Hartt School and a B.S in Music Education cum laude from Case Western Reserve University and the joint music program at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She has pursued additional studies at the American Saxophone Academy at the Eastman School of Music and the International SaxArts Festival in Faenza, Italy. Her primary teachers include Greg Banaszak, Carrie Koffman, and Jean-Michel Goury.

Alyssa can be heard alongside grammy-nominated saxophonist, Greg Banaszak, on Music Minus One’s, "Romantic Music for Alto Saxophone and Piano". Hoffert is a Conn-Selmer artist and performs on Selmer Paris Saxophones and mouthpieces.

Composer David Biedenbender’s music has been described as “simply beautiful” [twincities.com] and is noted for its “rhythmic intensity” [NewMusicBox] and “stirring harmonies” [Boston Classical Review]. “Modern, venturesome, and inexorable…The excitement, intensity, and freshness that characterizes Biedenbender’s music hung in the [air] long after the last note was played” [Examiner.com]. David has written music for the concert stage as well as for dance and multimedia collaborations, and his work is often influenced by his diverse musical experiences in rock and jazz bands as an electric bassist, in wind, jazz, and New Orleans-style brass bands as a euphonium, bass trombone, and tuba player, and by his study of Indian Carnatic Music. His present creative interests include working with everyone from classically trained musicians to improvisers, acoustic chamber music to large ensembles, and interactive electronic interfaces to live brain data. He has had the privilege of collaborating with and being commissioned by many talented performers and ensembles, including Alarm Will Sound, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Stenhammar String Quartet, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, U.S. Navy Band, Philharmonie Baden-Baden (Germany), VocalEssence, and Eastman Wind Ensemble, among many others. 

He is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at Michigan State University. He holds degrees in composition from the University of Michigan and Central Michigan University, and has also studied at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, the Aspen Music Festival, and in Mysore, India where he studied carnatic music. For more information, visit: www.davidbiedenbender.com.

"The very model of a modern music chamber band." - The NYTimes

Eighth Blackbird is “one of the smartest, most dynamic contemporary classical ensembles on the planet” (Chicago Tribune). Launched in 1996 as a twinkle in the eyes of six entrepreneurial Oberlin Conservatory undergraduates, this Chicago-based super-group has earned its status as “a brand-name…defined by adventure, vibrancy and quality….known for performing from memory, employing choreography and collaborations with theater artists, lighting designers and even puppetry artists” (Detroit Free Press).


Eighth Blackbird kicked off its 20th anniversary in 2016, quickly garnering a fourth GRAMMY Award as well as the prestigious MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, Chamber Music America’s inaugural Visionary Award, and Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year (2017). Anniversary celebrations continue throughout the 2016-17 season, culminating in the June 2017 launch of The Blackbird Creative Lab, an annual tuition-free two-week intensive for emerging artists at the Besant Hill School in Ojai, California.


Eighth Blackbird first gained wide recognition as the winner of the 1998 Concert Artists Guild Competition, and has since commissioned and premiered hundreds of works by dozens of composers including David T. Little, Steven Mackey, Missy Mazzoli, and Steve Reich, whose commissioned work, Double Sextet, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize (2009). A long-term relationship with Chicago’s Cedille Records has produced seven acclaimed recordings (most recently, Hand Eye) and four impressive GRAMMY Awards for Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance: for strange imaginary animals (2008), Lonely Motel: Music from Slide (2011), Meanwhile (2012), and Filament (2015).


Eighth Blackbird’s members (Nathalie Joachim, flutes; Michael J. Maccaferri, clarinets; Yvonne Lam, violin & viola; Nicholas Photinos, cello; Matthew Duvall, percussion; Lisa Kaplan, piano) hail from the Great Lakes, Keystone, Golden, Empire and Bay states. The name “Eighth Blackbird” derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens’s evocative, aphoristic poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (1917). Eighth Blackbird is managed by David Lieberman Artists' Representatives.

www.eighthblackbird.org

Grammy winning 8-voice band! throat-singers, yodelers, belters, classical singers, commissioners of music, collaborators, eaters of tasty food

Fundamental for his experience were and are the meetings with Beat Furrer, with whom he studied at the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Graz (2005/2006), Rostock Summer Campus 2009 and IMPULS 2005, 2007,  2009.
After his studies with Renato Miani in Udine (Italy) he attended the IRCAM Cursus 1 in composition and computer music 2010-2011, the  Pierluigi Billone’s seminar/course Klangwege at the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Graz (Austria) and the Stefano Gervasoni’s masterclass at the TEMA Academy in Milan (Italy).

Simone Movio received the “Komponisten-Förderpreise 2014” of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, he has been chosen as composer in residence at the Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg (Germany) concerning the season 2016/2017.

He won (among others) the Wiener Konzerthauses Composition Contest “Towards the Next 100 Years” (2012) - String Quartet (Wien, Austria), the "International Composition Competition Franz Schubert and Modern Music 2011" (Graz, Austria), the "IVME International Composition Contest 2011" (two first prizes in the two different categories - Antwerp, Belgium), the “Gianni Bergamo Music Award 2007 – Composition” (Lugano, Switzerland), the “Hamburger Klangwerktage 2007 – 2nd International Composition Contest, Lied Unlimited” (Hamburg, Germany)

He has been selected for the "9e Forum de la Jeune Création Musicale 2011" (SIMC – Clamart, France) and “IMPULS 2009” (Wien/Graz, Austria) as nominated composer.

He held composition seminars in the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Graz (Austria),  the institute Creama Hanyang University of Seoul (South Korea), National University of Music Bucharest (Romania), L. Cherubini conservatory in Firenze (Italy), the J. Tomadini conservatory in Udine (Italy).

Some of his pieces have been performed by important artists and ensembles (such as Beat Furrer, Enno Poppe, Clement Power, Klangforum Wien, Szymanowski Quartet, Ensemble Recherche, Sigma Project) in several events and places such as: Festival Présences-Radio France (Paris, France), Wiener Konzerthaus (Wien, Austria), Teatro La Fenice di Venezia (Italy), Tage für neue Musik (Zürich, Switzerland), KLANG Festival Copenhagen (Denmark), IRCAM (Paris, France), Festival GAMO (Firenze, Italy), Tchaikovsky Conservatory (Moscow, Russia), Helmut-List Halle (Graz, Austria).

The Austrian label “col legno” has just released his first portrait CD “Tuniche”, performed by Klangforum Wien and SIGMA Project.

Alyssa Hoffert, Saxophone is following