Music faculty, composer Rob Middleton is guest on WVIA’s “Art Scene”

Music Department faculty Rob Middleton was recently a guest on “Art Scene” hosted by Erika Funke on WVIA Public Media.  Middleton, a saxophonist/wind player and award-winning composer, talks about his recent suite “Giverny,” for alto sax and piano.

To hear the interview go to https://goo.gl/Xqis0W

Middleton works in a broad range of styles, from jazz and classical to commercial and ethnic music. He has performed around the U.S and abroad with many jazz greats, including Wynton Marsalis,  Branford Marsalis, Phil Woods, Harry Connick Jr., Lionel Hampton, The New York Voices, Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Lovano, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Woody Shaw, Oliver Lake, David Liebman, Randy Brecker, Jane Ira Bloom, and Jim McNeely.  Rob’s recent recordings, both jazz and classical, include “Portraits and Places”  with the Scott Reeves Jazz Orchestra, “Open Crossings”, music of Andy Teirstein, “Eleven” with the Birdland Big Band, “Composers in Collaboration”, new music by New Jersey women composers, and “Urban Soundscapes” with NewYorkestra, which he co-leads and writes for.  Rob also plays in and conducts the Birdland Big Band, which performs weekly at the famed Birdland Jazz Club in New York, and he is long-time member of the BMI/New York Jazz Orchestra, an ensemble dedicated to performing works created by the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop.  He is a former participant in that workshop and a winner of its composition prize.  His compositions and arrangements are performed regularly in the New York area and have appeared in a major motion picture, “The Thomas Crown Affair”.