Purchase tickets 
$10 general admission

2 sets at 7 pm and 9 pm

Cafe Coda
1224 Williamson Street
Madison, WI

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Free I No ticket required
Also streaming live

Salvador Flores, soprano saxophone
Walt Puyear, alto saxophone
Matthew Koester, tenor saxophone
Brian Kachur, baritone saxophone

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Program

Recently named Gold Medalists in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition’s Senior Wind Division, the Aero Quartet presents an eclectic program of works by Jennifer Higdon, Arturo Marquez, Robert Schumann, Gavin Bryars, Corey Dundee, and Hiromi Uehara. UW-Madison Division of the Arts Interdisciplinary Artist-In-Residence Arun Luthra joins Aero on John Coltrane’s prayer-like ballad Dear Lord, arranged by saxophonist Dave Liebman.

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Praised by Pulitzer Prize finalist and Grammy-winning composer Augusta Read Thomas for their “nuanced, colorful, and artfully sculpted” interpretations, the Aero Quartet is committed to promoting new and traditional chamber music for the saxophone. Aero’s performances are consistently recognized for their versatility and contrast, with original works and arrangements spanning centuries of musical tradition. The quartet has won numerous awards in chamber music competitions, including First Prizes at the New Orleans Chamber Festival, Music Teachers National Association, and Briggs Chamber Music Competitions. Most notably, Aero won the Gold Medal in the Senior Wind Division of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. This past fall, Aero completed a residency at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute in Boscawen, New Hampshire before embarking on the Fischoff Gold Medal Tour. The tour included performances at Thiel College, the Con Spirito Chamber Music Series, Valparaiso Concert Association, Midwest Young Artists Conservatory, Merrimans’ Playhouse Chamber Arts Series, and the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert broadcast live on WFMT Chicago.

The quartet’s 2021/22 season will include visits to the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings Nightnotes Series. As major advocates for the music of living composers, Aero will premiere works by Gala Flagello and Jennifer Higdon in forthcoming recordings and concerts.

Aero has conducted educational outreach clinics for hundreds of middle and high school students across the Midwest. We think the mission of these school visits is captured perfectly in the endearing written reflection of a beginning band student from Southbend, IN, who stated, “I personally really like chamber music now, especially if it’s played with saxophones!”

Purchase tickets
General admission: $13
Students: Free (ticket required)

Mead Witter School of Music Faculty Artist Series

Christopher Taylor, piano

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Hailed by critics as “frighteningly talented” (The New York Times) and “a great pianist” (The Los Angeles Times), Christopher Taylor has distinguished himself throughout his career as an innovative musician with a diverse array of talents and interests.  He is known for a passionate advocacy of music written in the past 100 years — Messiaen, Ligeti, and Bolcom figure prominently in his performances — but his repertoire spans four centuries and includes the complete Beethoven sonatas, the Liszt Transcendental Etudes, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and a multitude of other familiar masterworks. Whatever the genre or era of the composition, Mr. Taylor brings to it an active imagination and intellect coupled with heartfelt intensity and grace.

Mr. Taylor has concertized around the globe, with international tours taking him to Russia, Western Europe, East Asia, and the Carribean. At home in the U.S. he has appeared with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic,  Detroit Symphony, and the Milwaukee Symphony.  As a soloist he has performed in New York’s Carnegie and Alice Tully Halls, in Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Ravinia and Aspen festivals, and dozens of other venues. In chamber settings, he has collaborated with many eminent musicians, including Robert McDuffie and the Borromeo, Shanghai, Pro Arte, and Ying Quartets. His recordings have featured works by Liszt, Messiaen, and present-day Americans William Bolcom and Derek Bermel. Throughout his career Mr. Taylor has become known for undertaking memorable and unusual projects.  Examples include: an upcoming tour in which he will perform, from memory, the complete transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies by Liszt;  performances and lectures on the complete etudes of György Ligeti; and a series of performances of the Goldberg Variations on the unique double-manual Steinway piano in the collection of the University of Wisconsin.  He has actively promoted the rediscovery and refurbishment of the latter instrument; in recent years he has also been building a reinvented and modernized version of it, a project that relies on his computer and engineering skills and was unveiled in a demonstration recital in 2016.

Numerous awards have confirmed Mr. Taylor’s high standing in the musical world. He was named an American Pianists’ Association Fellow for 2000, before which he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1996 and the Bronze Medal in the 1993 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In 1990 he took first prize in the William Kapell International Piano Competition, and also became one of the first recipients of the Irving Gilmore Young Artists’ Award.

Mr. Taylor owes much of his success to several outstanding teachers, including Russell Sherman, Maria Curcio-Diamand, Francisco Aybar, and Julie Bees. In addition to his busy concert schedule, he currently serves as Paul Collins Associate Professor of Piano Performance at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He pursues a variety of other interests, including: mathematics (he received a summa cum laude degree from Harvard University in this field in 1992); philosophy (an article he coauthored with the leading scholar Daniel Dennett appears in the Oxford Free Will Handbook); computing; linguistics; and biking, which is his primary means of commuting. Mr. Taylor lives in Middleton, Wisconsin, with his wife and two daughters. Christopher Taylor is a Steinway artist.

Free I No ticket required

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Kyle Sackett DMA Voice Recital

Kyle Sackett, baritone
William Preston, Piano

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I love you through the day times       Libby Larsen

A wild sostenuto      Lori Laitman

No Time       Juliana Hall

A Dream of Nightingales      Ned Rorem

The enticing lane    Stephen Houtz

Sympathy      Florence Price

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Kyle Sackett, baritone, is a DMA student in voice with a doctoral minor in choral conducting. Before coming to Madison, Kyle worked extensively both teaching and performing in Chicago. He taught music theatre voice within the Theatre Conservatory at Roosevelt University and voice at Carthage College. Kyle has performed operatically with Haymarket Opera Company, Chicago Opera Theatre, Opera Atelier, and Opera for the Young, and is a frequent oratorio soloist around Chicagoland. A passionate choral singer, Kyle performs and records regularly with top-tier ensembles including the Grammy-winning new music ensemble The Crossing (Philadelphia), Music of the Baroque (Chicago), Grant Park Symphony Chorus (Chicago), Chicago Symphony Chorus, Bella Voce (Chicago), Constellation Men’s Ensemble (Chicago), Vocális Chamber Choir (Buffalo), and Berkshire Choral International, where he is a faculty member. He holds the M.M. in voice and opera performance from Northwestern University and the B.M. in music education from SUNY Fredonia (Fredonia, NY).

This event was originally scheduled for September 23, 2021 and has been rescheduled for February 13, 2022. Tickets purchased for the September 23 performance will be honored at the February 13 performance.

Purchase tickets
General admission: $13
Students: Free (ticket required)

Mead Witter School of Music Guest Artist Series

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belhaven

belhaven, the duo comprised of Abigail Fischer and Jason Slayden, is creating new experiences in art song. For UW-Madison, they will present a concert and master class. The concert will encompass two multi-media projects: the Beloved, a project framed around the Berg Sieben frühe Lieder, and Wesendonck Meditations: Into the Light, an immersive experience framed around Wagner’s only song cycle.

belhaven will collaborate with pianists Martha Fischer and Bill Lutes.

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Program

the beloved (an experience framed around Berg’s 7 frühe Lieder)
Wesendonck Meditations: Into the Light (framed around Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder)

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This project is generously supported by the Vilas Trust.