The professor of music had two articles published in the professional saxophone journal
Professor of Music Thomas Erdmann had two 6,000-word articles published in the March/April 2016 issue of Saxophone Today. Erdmann has now had over 250 articles published in professional/peer-reviewed journals.
The first article is on New York based jazz saxophonist and multi-woodwind artist Brian Landrus. Born and raised in Nevada, Landrus earned his Bachelor’s degree in Saxophone Performance from the University of Nevada-Reno, and two Master’s degrees, one in Jazz Composition and one in Jazz Saxophone, from the New England Conservatory. Currently working on a Doctorate in Classical Composition at Rutgers, he also teaches jazz courses, ensembles, and a composition studio at Rutgers as well as all of that and a woodwind studio at Manhattan’s 92Y School of Music. He has held previous teaching positions at the Tappan Education Center in New Jersey and the Urban Assembly School of Music & Art in Brooklyn. Landrus works not just as a leader but also as a sidemusician with the best of the best including Esperanza Spalding’s band and Ryan Truesdell’s Gil Evans Project, among others. Other greats with whom Landrus has worked include Ralph Alessi, Bob Brookmeyer, Danilo Perez, Maria Schneider, The Temptations, and Jerry Bergonzi, along with West Side Story on Broadway, to list just a few. Among the greats who have played in Landrus led bands include Michael Cain, Allan Chase, Mark Feldman, George Garzone, Billy Hart, and Lonnie Plaxico, to again list just a few.
The other article is on one of Elon Saxophone Professor Virginia Novine-Whitaker’s former students, Stacy Wilson. Wilson holds a saxophone chair in the West Point Concert Band, one of the military’s most highly prized and most prestigious ensembles, as well as currently serving as the Professor of Saxophone at Montclair State University. Her degrees are from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) and Indiana University (IU), where she is currently in progress as a doctoral candidate in saxophone performance. She has won a number of solo competitions including the modern music focused Gaudeamus International Interpreters Competition in Amsterdam and the William Byrd International Competition. As a soloist Wilson has appeared with the Flint Michigan Symphony Orchestra, Indiana University Orchestra, West Point Concert Band and U.S. Army Band In Europe (USAEUR), among others. As soprano saxophonist with the Zzyzx (pronounced zie-zix) Saxophone Quartet she has gained wide fame performing throughout the world in concerts, in winning prizes with the ensemble at a number of international competitions, and in the large number of clinics, masterclasses and residencies they’ve done in high schools and universities. City Arts Magazine NYC, in reviewing one of the ensemble’s concerts, said the ensemble, “exemplifies the happy development of the (saxophone) in the excellence of their playing, the quality of their repertoire, and their synthesis as a quartet.”