2021 Scholarship Winner Isabelle Mailman to Perform with HWS
Get ready for some extraordinary playing in February! Isabelle Mailman, our 2021 Summer Music Scholarship Winner, will be performing with the Hanover Wind Symphony (HWS) on Wednesday, February 16, 2022 at Memorial Junior School in Whippany. She will be playing her alto saxophone at a level beyond her years!
Isabelle, who is a junior at Wayne Valley High School, is excited to perform with the HWS on the 16th. This will be her first time (and surely not her last!) performing as a soloist with a concert band.
She opted to use her scholarship towards private lessons rather than attend a music camp. She took in-person and Zoom lessons last summer with Dr. Paul Cohen who teaches at the Manhattan School of Music, New York University, Columbia University, and Rutgers University. She was excited to learn to play in the altissimo range which extends the normal 2-1/2 octaves for the saxophone up another octave.
According to Dr. Cohen, “Working with Izzy Mailman was a celebration of enthusiasm, fierce musical interest, an uncommon emerging artistry, and overwhelming talent. A joy to work with, she learned these sophisticated, difficult pieces at an astonishing pace and performs them at an artistic level well beyond her years!”
Isabelle was also our 2019 junior division scholarship winner – the first to come back to win the senior division. She will perform two selections with the wind symphony including Alfred Reed’s Ballade for Alto Saxophone and Band. It is one of a group of three pieces for solo wind instruments and band commissioned by the G. LeBlanc Corporation in 1955, as performance vehicles for their artist/clinicians. Also on the program is Bernhard Heiden’s Diversion for Alto Saxophone and Band which was composed while Heiden served as Assistant Bandmaster for the 445th US Army band during World War II.
While living through the isolation of the pandemic last year, Isabelle gained a newfound enthusiasm for music. “Listening to music and playing the saxophone became comforting and some of the highlights of my day.” This year “has been a dream” for her to play with the Hanover Wind Symphony and place first in the New Jersey Region I Wind Ensemble on the alto saxophone.
Mark your calendar for Wednesday, February 16 at 7:00 pm at Memorial Junior School in Whippany!
