PACIFIC ARTS WOODWIND QUINTET
The Pacific Arts Woodwind Quintet carries on a long tradition of outstanding performance at the Conservatory beginning in 1970. The ensemble has performed for school groups, community concert organizations, professional musician associations, teacher conventions and at music festivals including two recent tours to Panama. The members include: flutist Brittany Trotter, oboist Kyle Bruckmann, clarinetist Patricia Shands, bassoonist Nicolasa Kuster; and horn player Sadie Glass.
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.
Equally versed in post-classical contemporary music, 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.
In demand as a clinician, 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.
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, Trotter continues to actively study the merging of Western classical music, diverse culture, and modern popular music. Recently, she presented a lecture recital entitled “Flute and Hip Hop” as part of her artist residency with Unisound of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) and at the 2022 NFA Convention in Chicago.
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 100 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.
Since moving to the Bay Area in 2003, 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 art-punk monstrosity Lozenge.
Bruckmann serves as the program director of chamber music and assistant professor of practice in oboe at the University of the Pacific’s Conservatory of Music. His other 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, José-Luis 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 worked extensively for bandleaders such as Andrew Raffo Dewar and Lisa Mezzacappa.
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.
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.
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.
A prizewinner in the 1987 Concert Artists Guild Competition, 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
PACIFIC ARTS WOODWIND QUINTET
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 Chamber Orchestra.
Nicolasa Kuster serves as associate dean of academic affairs and associate professor of bassoon at the University of the Pacific. She enjoys a ich orchestral, chamber, and solo performing life around northern California and beyond. She 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 Meg Quigley Bassoon Symposium, which is open to all.
Kuster is principal bassoon of the Stockton Symphony and New Hampshire Music Festival orchestras, second bassoon (acting principal) of the Monterey Symphony, and performs regularly with the San Diego Symphony, Sacramento Philharmonic, and others. Her 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.
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 doubledegree 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.
Sadie Glass began experimenting with the natural horn during her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point. Like many horn players, she started noodling around on a “valve-ectomy” horn that was collecting dust in an instrument closet. Encouraged by her teacher, Patrick Miles, she attended workshops where she studied with some of the leading early horn specialists including a particularly memorable coaching with Hermann Baumann at the Kendall Betts Horn Camp (KBHC) in New Hampshire. Sadie is now the natural horn faculty member herself at KBHC and teaches a new generation of early horn players.
PACIFIC ARTS WOODWIND QUINTET
Recognized for her “polished tone,” Sadie Glass is an active educator and performer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sadie is a tenured member of the Monterey Symphony and has performed with many orchestras throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including the San Francisco Symphony, Stockton Symphony, Marin Symphony, and Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera. Sadie performs as a soloist and orchestral hornist with period-instrument ensembles across North America, including Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra, Bach Collegium San Diego, Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Valley of the Moon Music Festival, and Seattle Baroque Orchestra. Her recent solo appearances include performing Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 1 with the horn quartet Quadre (2022), Telemann’s Double Horn Concerto (TWV 52:Es1) with the Seattle Baroque Orchestra (2023), and Ligeti’s Hamburg Concerto with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Modern Ensemble (2023).
As an educator, Sadie is on faculty at the University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music in Stockton, California, where she teaches modern and historic horn lessons, music fundamentals, coaches student ensembles, is the faculty advisor of the Pacific Brass Society, and is a member of the Pacific Arts Woodwind Quintet. Sadie has also held teaching positions at Pacific Union College, Las Positas College, Chabot College, and El Sistema music programs. Outside of music, Sadie enjoys spending time with her family, is a DIY enthusiast and a Disney vacation planning expert, and loves to travel.
GUEST ARTIST
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.
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, 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.
PACIFIC ARTS WOODWIND
QUINTET
Having begun his saxophone studies in the Bay Area under David Henderson of Stanford University and William Trimble, 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, 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. Martinez is an endorsing artist for Legere Reeds and BG France.
PACIFIC FACULTY COMPOSER
Andrew Conklin is a composer, songwriter, singer, and multiinstrumentalist who makes music that engages with American vernacular idioms and contemporary classical practices. He has appeared as a composer or performer throughout the United States and Europe, and his music has garnered recognition from diverse voices spanning the worlds of popular and classical music.
Andrew’s work has received critical acclaim in blogs such as Pitchfork and The Line of Best Fit, and has been supported by grants from organizations including the Trust for Mutual Understanding, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and Vox Novus. His first fulllength album, If I Were More Like You, was praised in Filter magazine as “one of the best collections of songs I’ve had the pleasure of being exposed to, ever.” Andrew was a 2018 Fellow at the Millay Arts, where he worked on a large-scale composition project based on Northern California folk music from the late 1930s. Two pieces in this cycle, Field Reports and Song Collector, were released in 2019 and 2020 on New Focus Recordings and Bot Cave Records, respectively. Among Andrew’s current projects is Site: Yizkor, an ongoing collaboration with the multimedia artist Maya Ciarrocchi that was presented in part at the Bronx Museum of Art in 2020, and was premiered in full at the Sichów Educational Foundation and Roza Centre (Poland) in 2022.
A versatile musical collaborator, Andrew earned a 2017 Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Recording for his contributions to The Hazel and Alice Sessions (Spruce and Maple Music) as a core band member of Laurie Lewis & The Right Hands. Andrew’s guitar and bass playing can be heard on multiple record labels and he has recently contributed as a guitarist to recordings by Ben Goldberg, Meklit Hadero, and Michael Rocketship. He has also toured extensively in the United States and Europe as a guitarist and bassist with indie rock bands (Chris
GUEST ARTIST
Cohen), bluegrass groups (Laurie Lewis), and improvising combos (Timosaurus). As a composer, Andrew has enjoyed fruitful partnerships with musicians from some of today’s most inquisitive new music ensembles, including the International Contemporary Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, Ensemble Mise-En, Spektral Quartet, Ensemble Connect, Tala Rasa Percussion, the Calidore String Quartet, and Earplay.
Andrew also spends time thinking and writing about usic theory, composition, and the pedagogy of music theory and composition. He has published articles and presented papers on these topics for Music Theory Online, NewMusicBox, Pedagogy into Practice, and the Society of Composers National Conference. Andrew previously held teaching positions at West Chester University of Pennsylvania and Stony Brook University before joining University of the Pacific in 2018, where he currently directs the composition and music theory program.
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PACIFIC FACULTY COMPOSER
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