Phil Pierick

A staunch advocate for new music, saxophonist Phil Pierick has commissioned more than twenty-five new works and presented over fifty premieres in France, Germany, Austria, Canada, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United States. Recent recording projects include an album of previously unreleased chamber music for saxophone by Percy Grainger (Naxos), an entry in the Stockhausen Verlag’s complete discography of Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Invisible Seams (Teal Creek), an album of new works composed for his saxophone duo, Ogni Suono. Since 2010, Ogni Suono has commissioned new works, performed, and taught throughout North America, Europe, Israel, and Southeast Asia. With a grant from New Music USA, the duo has recently initiated SaxoVoce, a long-term performance project exploring the wide-ranging possibilities of synthesizing saxophone and voice. The duo has conducted workshops for young musicians in Chicago, Los Angeles, Malaysia, and Thailand and community outreach programs in Iowa City, IA as winner of a 2012-2013 Yamaha-in-Residence Fellowship from the College Music Society.

The only saxophonist to receive prizes at both the Jean-Marie Londeix International Saxophone Competition (2014) and the ISSAC International Saxophone Competition (2012), Phil is also a three-time prizewinner at the MTNA National Young Artist and Chamber Music Competitions (2009, 2011, 2012), and was named Vandoren Emerging Artist of 2011. He received Eastman School of Music’s 2014 Teaching Assistant Prize for his work as an instructor of chamber music at Eastman. Phil aims to foster the internal curiosity and creativity of students, cultivating their own personal musical interests and goals. His students have taken first prize in the MTNA National Chamber Music (2016, 2014) and 198th Army Band Small Ensemble (2015, 2013) competitions, and have been semi-finalists in the ISSAC International Saxophone Competition (2013). Guest teaching has taken Phil to the Allerton Chamber Music Symposium, Illinois Summer Youth Music, and more than two dozen universities and conferences in the United States, Canada, and Taiwan.

Phil teaches at The College of Wooster as Adjunct Instructor of Saxophone and is a Vandoren Performing Artist. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music, where he was also awarded both the Performer’s Certificate and Arts Leadership Program Certificate and served as teaching assistant to Chien-Kwan Lin. As a 2014-2015 Fulbright Scholar, Phil studied contemporary performance practice in Vienna with Lars Mlekusch. His Bachelor and Master of Music degrees are from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied with Debra Richtmeyer and held the position of saxophone teaching assistant. Additional studies in Paris with Jean-Michel Goury as a recipient of the 2009 Frank Huntington Beebe Fund for Musicians.