Rhonda Taylor--saxophone

Dr. Rhonda Taylor has been on faculty at New Mexico State University since 2003, where she teaches applied saxophone and music theory. She completed her D.M.A. at the University of Arizona, where she studied with Kelland Thomas. She earned her M.M. as a graduate assistant of John Sampen at Bowling Green State University. Additional studies of Dr. Taylor’s include performances in master classes held by Fred Hemke and Eugene Rousseau, as well as attending Domaine Forget Music Academie to study with Jean-Marie Londeix and Jean-François Guay.

In 2002, Dr. Taylor was awarded a scholarship to the International Clarinet and Saxophone Connection held at New England Conservatory, where she studied with Arno Bornkamp, Jean-Michel Goury, and Kenneth Radnovsky. As an advocate for new music, Dr. Taylor has worked with a variety of today’s most outstanding composers, including Bernard Rands, Robert Morris, Jeffrey Mumford, Michael Colgrass, and Robert Lemay. She has also commissioned and premiered numerous solo and chamber works by such emerging composers as Rick Burkhardt, Justin Rubin, Scott Winship, and Jon Forshee.

Dr. Taylor’s most recent activities include lecture recitals on Gérard Grisey’s Anubis et Nout at the Manuel Castillo Conservatorio Superior de Música in Sevilla, Spain, and at the Université de Montréal, as well as performances at the Group for Liquid Media’s New Music for Saxophone(s) in Rochester, NY, the 2004 and 2002 North American Saxophone Alliance Biennials, the 13th and the 12th World Saxophone Congresses, the ThreeTwo Festival of New Music (NYC), the Bowling Green State University 20th Annual Festival of New Music and Art, the University of Minnesota Duluth New Music Festival, and the University of California San Diego Spring New Music Festival. Her recording of Jeffrey Mumford’s milliner’s fancy, a solo work she jointly commissioned with David Reminick, is available as part of the CD The Promise of The Far Horizon on the Albany label.