Held on the campus of Augustana College in Rock Island, IL, the Shockingly Modern Saxophone Festival is an annual event that celebrates new and experimental music for saxophone. The festival features solo and chamber music that explores the nearly unlimited sonic potential of the saxophone through new composition, improvisation, extended performance techniques, microtonality, electronic music, multimedia, and other experimental elements. This music often challenges and expands our ideas about music as it pushes the saxophone to its technical and expressive limits. The two-day festival includes multiple concerts and pedagogical events.

 

Each year the SMSF invites a guest artist to lead forums, and present a masterclass and a recital. SMSF is excited to welcome Erin Rogers as the Featured Guest Artist. Erin is a New York-based saxophonist and composer whose work explores the intersection of chamber music, sound alchemy, and theatre, using vocals, improvisation, and performance practice to inform timbre, gesture, and theme, moving freely between acoustic and electronic mediums.

​​

The 2020 SMSF will also feature artists from around the country and Canada. Performers include Bob Bucko Jr., the Colere Quartet, James Cunningham, Glen Gillis, Dr. Randall Hall, Phil Pierick, Dr, Nicki Roman, Dr. Alex Wier, and members of the Augustana College Saxophone Studio.