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 July.August 2016 issue of Saxophone Today.
The first article is on Jeffrey Loeffert. While currently serving as an Associate Professor of Saxophone at Oklahoma State University, in summers he not only teaches at Michigan’s prestigious Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, but also at Oklahoma’s Great Plains Saxophone Workshop, Vermont’s New Music on the Point, and the Cortona Sessions for New Music in Cortona, Italy.
As a chamber musician he’s a founding member of one of the world’s premiere saxophone ensembles, the h2 quartet. Duke University Saxophone Professor Susan Fancher describes them as, “One of the tightest ensembles I have ever heard,” with Patrick Hanudel of the American Record Guide seconding her, “The H2 Quartet is a tight group… they often sound like one instrument.” He goes on to write, “Their timbres blend nicely… and they are just as at home in the sensitive and atmospheric and the high-flying virtuoso.” Their initial fame was built on winning numerous first place awards at the world’s top competitions including the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the North American Saxophone Alliance Quartet Competition, and the Union Française de Artistes Musiciens Chamber Music Competition in France. An active recording artist, Loeffert has also been featured on PBS’s Backstage Pass and his recording of Groove Canon by Marc Mellits was featured as the theme music for the Broadway show The Heidi Chronicles starring Elisabeth Moss and Jason Biggs.
Loeffert’s schooling includes a double major Bachelor’s degree in Saxophone Performance and Jazz Studies from Northwestern, studies in Paris at the Paris Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Cergy-Pontoise, the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Boulogne-Billancourt, and a Master’s and Doctorate in Saxophone Performance and a Master’s in Music Theory from Michigan State University.
The second article is on saxophonist, flutist, composer and bandleader Hailey Niswanger (pronounced “NICE–wonger”). Among the many prestigious gigs she’s scored include the Portland Jazz Festival (2015), Cathedral Park Jazz Festival (2015), Northampton Jazz Festival (2013), Saratoga Jazz Festival (2012, 2010), Red Clay Jazz Festival (2011), Salem Jazz Festival (2011), Beaches International Jazz Festival (2010), and the Elkhart Jazz Festival (2010). She won the Mary Lou Williams Women In Jazz Saxophone Competition during her last year of high school, which allowed her to play in the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival during her freshman year at the Berklee College of Music.
Born in Houston, TX on February 12, 1990, she currently lives and works out of Brooklyn, New York via an upbringing in Portland, OR. In addition to earning a degree in Jazz Performance from Boston’s Berklee, some of her recent accomplishments include being a member of bassist Esperanza Spalding’s Radio Music Society world-touring ensemble, playing with Ralph Peterson’s Fo’tet and Sextet, and being a member of the former Arsenio Hall bandleader Michael Wolff’s band with Mike Clark, the Wolff & Clark Expedition. Critics have also taken notice. Niswanger has been listed on the DownBeat Critics Poll for rising star on alto and soprano saxophone for the last three years (2013, 2014, 2015) and was profiled in the Wall Street Journal by famed jazz critic Nat Hentoff.