Wildy Zumwalt

Saturday, March 29, Esber Hall MB1, 3:00pm - 3:30pm

Nature Suite (1937) – Freda Swain

    I.    Elfin March

    II.   The Water Fairy

    III.  The Lonely Night Wind

    IV.  Romantic Pastoral

    V.   Perpetual Dance

Satyr’s Dance (1936) – Freda Swain

Wildy Zumwalt, alto saxophone and I-Fei Chen-Markham, piano

The English composer and pianist Freda Swain was a gifted artist who like so many other women musicians throughout history remained in the shadows of a male dominated profession. Swain’s compositional output was varied and prolific, having written some 450 works for different mediums. Born in Portsmouth in 1902, she studied in the prestigious

Tobias Matthay Piano School from the age of 11. She entered the Royal Academy of Music in London in 1921 and began teaching there in 1924. Swain was a strong advocate for new music and she founded the “British Music Movement”, an organization which gave young composers the opportunity to have their works played in venues throughout England.

Sigurd Rascher met Swain in January of 1934 when he collaborated with her husband, pianist Arthur Alexander, in a performance at a meeting of the ISCM at the London ContemporaryMusic Center. The three became fast friends and whenever Rascher performed in London, which he did frequently in the mid 1930s, he stayed with Swain and her husband. Her first saxophone work was the Satyr’s Dance composed for Rascher in 1936. The following year she wrote a solo saxophone work entitled Nature Suite for solo saxophone. Both works are skillfully written character pieces that illustrate Swain’s natural gift for melody, gesture, and form as wellas a keen understanding of the expressive potential of the saxophone, including the full four octave range. Rascher left Europe for the United States at the onset of World War II and nearly fifteen years passed before he and Swain reconnected. Though they made initial efforts to publish her saxophone works in the 1950s, an unfortunate falling-out between them left these gems of the repertoire in hiding for the last 75 years. After extensive research, I have edited the music based on the wishes of both Swain and Rascher, and acquired the rights to publish both works, which will soon be made available to the saxophone community. These will be the first of several unpublished works composed for Rascher to be released through Zumwalt Music Inc. and they will be available in both digital and hard copy. I would be delighted to have the opportunity to perform these “new/old” works for my friends and colleagues at the 2024 Region 8 NASA Conference. Thank you for your consideration!

Wildy Zumwalt, Professor of Saxophone at the State University of New York in Fredonia, is an active performer, teacher and scholar of the saxophone with regular engagements in the US and Europe. He has presented recitals and masterclasses at universities and public schools throughout the United States as well as in Holland, Germany and Poland. Zumwalt has been a featured soloist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Western New York Chamber Orchestra, and the Erie Chamber Orchestra. As a chamber musician, he performs regularly on the Musical Feast Series at the Burchfield Penney Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY. Zumwalt is first-call saxophonist with the Chautauqua Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Erie Philharmonic. He has played also with the Knoxville Symphony, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Flagstaff Symphony and Naples (FL) Philharmonic, among others. Additionally he has been featured in numerous radio broadcasts including National Public Radio’s Performance Today. Dr. Zumwalt is a noted scholar on early German repertoire for the saxophone and his research has led to the re-discovery and publication of works by Edmund von Borck, Hans Brehme and Hugo Kaun. Zumwalt is currently writing a biography on the classical saxophone pioneer, Sigurd M. Rascher, whose Archive is held in the Reed Library at the State University of New York in Fredonia.