Forbidden Oracles with Sō Percussion. With Joseph Connor, alto saxophone.

~Nois' DISCOVERY is a recap of the awesome music and people we’ve discovered this past season. This year's DISCOVERY will feature some of our favorite repertoire from this year including works by Viet Cuong and Arturo Márquez alongside a world premiere arrangement of "entr’acte" by Caroline Shaw, arranged by our very own Julian Velasco. 

DISCOVERY will also feature the winners of our 2025 Young Creators Fellowship. ~Nois’s Young Creators Fellowship is an opportunity for talented and creative high-school aged students to create a new collaborative work with ~Nois. This year, we are THRILLED to be premiering new works by Malik Muhammad and John Mangum.

Tickets available now! https://musicbooking.depaul.edu/EventAvailability?WebEventId=20250422nois

Guest Artist Recital. With Joseph Connor, alto saxophone.

Guest artist recital and masterclass. With Uday Singh, alto saxophone.

Q & A with artists after.

Second Nature with the Pacific Symphony Youth Wind Ensemble. With Uday Singh, alto saxophone.

Tickets are free!

Second Nature with the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts Wind Ensemble. With Philip Kleutgens, alto saxophone.

Second Nature with the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts Wind Ensemble. With Philip Kleutgens, alto saxophone.

Workshop/Performance of Second Nature at CSU Long Beach, Bob Cole Conservatory

4:00pm

The Shockingly Modern Saxophone Festival celebrates new and experimental music for saxophone. It explores the nearly unlimited sonic potential of the saxophone through new composition, improvisation, extended performance techniques, microtonality, electronic music, multimedia, and other experimental elements. The festival features performances by the Augustana saxophone students and faculty, as well as an annual guest artist. These performances often challenge and expand our ideas about music as they push the saxophone to its technical and expressive limits.

All events are free and open to the public.

The final event at 7:30 p.m. will feature a performance from the ~Nois saxophone quartet (hey that’s US!)

Masterclass at 3pm

Recital at 4:30pm

Varo String Quartet and ~Nois play Poetics of Space Translation Symmetry  by Noah Jenkins

Chicago contemporary music powerhouses ~Nois and Varo String Quartet come together for the first time for the world premiere of Poetics of Space Translation Symmetry by Chicago composer Noah Jenkins. The 45-minute octet features a spatial arrangement with the strings centered in the performance space and the saxophones posted around the perimeter. Tones, players, and quartets sound individually and fuse together into composites, melodic shapes blur into vertical harmony, and just-intonation harmonies are animated as their constituent tones take shape in spatiotemporal patterns. 

This Valentine’s Eve, step into a world of sonic enchantment at the Athenaeum for Imaginary Lovers, a special concert event presented as part of Eighth Blackbird’s Artist-in-Residence.

In this groundbreaking collaboration, Shara Nova, the visionary founder of My Brightest Diamond and Broadway star (notably in “Illinoise”), joins forces with the Grammy Award-winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird to premiere a new work that blends Nova’s signature pop-chamber style with the group’s genre-bending, virtuosic musicianship.

This one-of-a-kind performance is a not-to-be-missed opportunity to witness a truly unique musical collaboration between two of today’s most innovative forces in contemporary music. Plus, an exciting opener from Chicago’s own saxophone quartet, ~Nois! (That’s US!!)

Featuring Taimur Sullivan on alto saxophone guest artist.

High Tide by Christian Quiñones

Running in a Field of Flowers by Travis Laplante

Free and open to the public.

The evening concert cancelled due to inclement weather & President Jimmy Carter’s Funeral. The rest of the Symposium and ~Nois recital will still take place as scheduled.

Student Composition Reading. With Philip Kleutgens, alto saxophone.

Second Nature with the UVA Wind Ensemble. With Philip Kleutgens, alto saxophone.

Guest Artist Recital. With Philip Kleutgens, alto saxophone.

Second Nature with the CU Boulder Wind Ensemble. With Brandon Quarles, alto saxophone.

This event will be livestreamed by CU Boulder: https://cupresents.org/cu-boulder-college-of-music-Livestream/

Guest Artist Recital. With Brandon Quarles, alto saxophone.

CU Boulder Soundworks. With Brandon Quarles, alto saxophone.

This event will be livestreamed by CU Boulder: https://cupresents.org/cu-boulder-college-of-music-Livestream/

Premieres of CU Boulder faculty. With Brandon Quarles, alto saxophone.

This event will be livestreamed by CU Boulder: https://cupresents.org/cu-boulder-college-of-music-Livestream/

LIVESTREAM AVAILABLE - Tune in online!

Works by Elijah Daniel Smith, Annika Socolofsky, Augusta Read Thomas, Darian Donovan Thomas, Kari Watson, and Shelley Washington

Tickets are FREE, but seats are limited. RSVP to be sure to get a seat!

DISCOVERY will feature the full world-premiere of Augusta Read Thomas' "Shakespeare's Jesters" as well as the premiere of a brand new video for Darian Donovan Thomas' Sun Thrower (done by our new friends at Four|Ten Media).

DISCOVERY will also feature the winners of our 2024 Young Creators Fellowship. We'll also be featuring our super-star intern, Natalia Warthen in her duo SiP. They'll be performing two pieces from their repertoire by Daijana Wallace and Minoo Dixon.

Get tickets HERE: https://www.ticketweb.com/event/nois-kinds-of-nois-album-space-tickets/13399253

All tickets purchasers will receive a copy of Kinds of ~Nois shipped directly to their home! 

Join ~Nois as they celebrate the release of their sophomore album, Kinds of ~Nois. The group presents a post-minimalist and experimental collection of new works by the international composer collective Kinds of Kings. Kinds of ~Nois celebrates six years of collaboration with Shelley Washington, Gemma Peacocke, and Maria Kaoutzani in world premiere recordings of works written specifically for the ensemble.

From inspiring melodies, driving grooves, and haunting textures, the musical voices of the Kinds of Kings collective brilliantly highlight some of the best of what this ensemble can do.

Renowned composer Bernard Rands will celebrate his 90th birthday with a two-day residency at Guarneri Hall. The event will feature works that deeply influenced Rands, compositions from his own seven-decade career, and pieces written by composers on whom Rands has had a profound influence.

In addition to the music, Rands will talk about his life and his earliest influences, illuminate elements in his work, and talk about the music of the composers that have followed him. The two-day event will conclude with a party in honor of Mr. Rands.

Artists include the Terra String Quartet; NOIS Saxophone Quartet; Kristina Bachrach, soprano; and Alexander Hersh, cello.

For more information and tickets: https://guarnerihall.org/event/rands-at-90-part-1/

Radio broadcast of the Kinds of ~Nois album!

Chicago area tune in on the radio 98.7 FM. Tune in via streaming on wfmt.com and the WFMT app.

3:00 pm: ~Nois recital

Saxophone Day is designed to provide an exciting musical experience for high school saxophone students, alumni, university saxophonists, and amateur and professional artists.

More ~details coming soon!