Mark Engebretson, DMA,

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

(born 1964, California) is a saxophonist and composer. His music combines

computer music Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and ap ...

and live performance, the latter usually performed on saxophone.

Biography

Engebretson was born in California and raised in Alexandria, Minnesota. His family later moved to

North St. Paul, Minnesota North Saint Paul (abbreviated North St. Paul) is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States, located east-northeast of the city of Saint Paul. The population was 11,460 at the 2010 census. North Saint Paul is a distinct city, and not ...

. His father, a retired doctor, is also a saxophonist as well as a clarinettist. Engbretson attended

St. Olaf College St. Olaf College is a private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota. It was founded in 1874 by a group of Norwegian-American pastors and farmers led by Pastor Bernt Julius Muus. The college is named after the King and the Patron Saint Olaf ...

for a year before transferring to the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

. He is currently Associate Professor of Composition and Electronic Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and director of the Alice Virginia Poe Williams Electronic Music Studio at that university. He is a member of Red Clay Saxophone Quartet and was formerly a member of the Vienna Saxophone Quartet. Aside from Northwestern University, he also studied at the

and the Conservatoire de Bordeaux. His teachers have included

Frederick Hemke Fred Hemke, DMA ''(né'' Frederick Leroy Hemke Jr.; July 11, 1935 – April 17, 2019) was an American virtuoso classical saxophonist and influential professor of saxophone at Northwestern University. Hemke helped raise the popularity of classi ...

Jean-Marie Londeix Jean-Marie Londeix (20 September 1932) is a French saxophonist born in Libourne who studied saxophone, piano, harmony and chamber music.Ingham, Richard (ed.)''The Cambridge Companion to the Saxophone'' Cambridge University Press (1998) p. 169. Umb ...

, M. William Karlins,

Pauline Oliveros Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center ...

Marta Ptaszynska Marta Ptaszyńska (born 29 July 1943) is a Polish composer, percussionist and professor of music at the University of Chicago. She has been described by the Polish Music Center of the University of Southern California as "one of the best known Poli ...

Michael Pisaro Michael Pisaro (born 1961 in Buffalo, New York) is a guitarist and composer. A member of the Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble, he has composed over 80 works for a great variety of instrumental combinations, including several pieces for variable ins ...

and

Jay Alan Yim Jay Alan Yim (born April 24, 1958) is an American composer of Chinese descent and recipient of a 1994 Guggenheim Fellowship. Early life and education Yim was born into a Chinese family in St. Louis, Missouri on April 24, 1958. He attended th ...

Music

As a composer his influences include

Eugène Bozza Eugène Joseph Bozza (4 April 1905 – 28 September 1991)Grove Music Online: "Bozza, Eugène"; accessed 20 September 2014, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/03791. was a French composer and violinist. He was one of t ...

and

Paule Maurice Paule Charlotte Marie Jeanne Maurice (29 September 1910 – 18 August 1967) was a French composer. Life and career Maurice was born in Paris to Raoul Auguste Alexandre Maurice and Marguerite Jeanne Lebrun. Registration lists at the Conservat ...

. Eric Stokes introduced him to

experimental music Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, ...

and ''found sound'' (i.e. Found art using sounds as its material). Engebretson has received commissions from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

's Fromm Music Foundation (2007) and the Thomas S. Kenan Center for the Arts (2008). His compositions have been performed at Indiana State University New Music Festival (Terre Haute, Indiana) and

International Society for Contemporary Music The International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) is a music organization that promotes contemporary classical music. The organization was established in Salzburg in 1922 as Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (IGNM) following the ...

Festivals (Tirana, Albania and Baku, Azerbaijan) as well as several lesser known contemporary music festivals such as Wien Modern (Vienna), Gaida Festival (Vilnius, Lithuania), Ny Musikk (Bergen, Norway) and the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival. The world premiere of ''SaxMax'' was given at the 14th World Saxophone Congress in Ljubljana, Slovenia by James Romain.

References

External links

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Publisher
Effiny Music
Publisher
Apoll Edition, Vienna
Mark Engebretson
member page on Society of Composers
Faculty Profile
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, School of Music
Profile
on Hartwick College Music Festival website
Innova Records listing
for recordings on Innova label'

on World Saxophone Congress website
Red Clay Saxophone Quartet - Mark Engebretson
profile on Steve Stusek personal website
Programme notes with biography and profile
for the North American Saxophone Alliance 2004 biennial conference {{DEFAULTSORT:Engebretson, Mark 21st-century classical composers American male classical composers American classical composers University of Minnesota alumni American classical saxophonists American male saxophonists Living people People from Douglas County, Minnesota 1964 births Conservatoire de Bordeaux alumni 21st-century American composers 21st-century American saxophonists 21st-century American male musicians