By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Saxophonist Aidan Peper is no stranger to local audiences. A graduate of Bowling Green High School, he has played with bands there as well as with the Bowling Green Area Community concert band.
On Saturday night he will perform on a bigger stage with the Bowling Green Philharmonia as one of the four winners of this year’s Competitions in Musical Performance.
Saturday’s performance will be at 8 p.m. in Kobacker Hall on the BGSU campus. Tickets are $10. Click for advance ticket sales.
Soloists will be in order of performance:
- Jacob Loitz, alto saxophone, Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Chamber Ensemble by Walter Mays conducted by Emily Freeman Brown.
- Hannah Zaborski, piano, Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra by Alfred Schnittke, conducted by Allana Bogan.
- Luca Albano, piano, Piano Concerto No. 5 in F Major by Camille Saint-Saëns conducted by Eden Treado.
- Peper, alto saxophone, two movements from Concerto Pour Saxophone Alto et Orchestra by Henri Tomasi and conducted by Bo Young Kang.
Aidan Peper
As a sophomore Peper is one of two undergraduate winners.
He started in music with piano lessons in second grade, which he continued through high school.
In middle school under the tutelage of teachers Bruce Corrigan, Jeremy Sison, and Kayla (Gallatin) Gronsky, he wanted to learn as many instruments as he could. That included viola in orchestra and saxophone in band.
“I liked the community feel we had in band and orchestra .”
When Peper got to high school, his band teachers told him about a scholarship from the band boosters that would help him pay for private lessons in saxophone. He started studying with Stan George. He and George “clicked.” Though Peper played in the jazz band starting in middle school, he wanted to focus on classical saxophone.
“I think I’ve always resonated more with the classical sound,” he said, adding, “maybe I’m too uptight to lean into the jazz scene.”
When it came to selecting a college, Peper wanted to look around to see what was available beyond his home town so “I could broaden my horizons,” he said. “After looking around and seeing what’s here, I figured this is the place for me. … Ultimately it came down to the connections and how great of a program we have here.”
He noted that Gronsky who was an important influence on him in middle school, studied at BGSU with John Sampen, who is now Peper’s teacher.
Sampen suggested Peper work on the Tomasi concerto. The piece is an important part of the saxophone’s repertoire. “I love the big dramatic, cinematic moments. It has that full orchestra sound,” he said, adding, “I love that closing operatic line.”
This is the first time he will be the soloist with an orchestra, though he has been featured with the BGHS Symphonic Band and with the community concert band.
He started performing with the community band during the summer. He was featured in the band’s show before the fireworks on July 3.
He loves the sense of camaraderie in the band. As a high school student considering going into music education, he could draw on the advice of the many retired band directors in the ensemble.
Jacob Loitz
Loitz, one of the graduate winners, also came to BGSU to study with Sampen.
He did his undergraduate work in music education at Augustana College in Rockville, Illinois. His teacher told him it was “always his dream to study with Dr. Sampen because how well versed in contemporary music he is.”
The piece Loitz is performing on Saturday’s concert was composed for Sampen, who premiered it at the World Saxophone Congress.
“The piece really interested me because its language is a lot different than a lot of other saxophone concertos,” Loitz said. “It’s really deep and complex. It’s one of our first recorded uses of extended techniques.” That includes slap tones and multiphonics, with the saxophone player sounding more than one tone at a time.
This is Loitz first time as a soloist with an orchestra. “You certainly have to have a lot of trust with your ensemble mates,” he said. “I don’ t get to look back at them and give any cues or direction to them even though I have such a huge role in the piece. I just have to trust that they are excellent musicians which they are which is awesome.”
Loitz was inspired to pick up saxophone after hearing a jazz band in fourth grade. He started taking lessons from “an inspirational teacher” in sixth grade.
“It was the fact that he was living his art every day,” Loitz said. “He taught, he performed, he did research. Every moment of his life was devoted to this cool art which really interested me.”
Then in high school, he had an adjudicator who challenged him to delve deeper. “There’s a lot more to saxophone than you think there is,” the adjudicator told him. “That kicked me into gear.”
Though he played both jazz and classical at Augustana, he made the switch to concentrate on classical at BGSU.
“I wish there were enough hours in the day to put in to be great at both,” he said. “For me I don’t necessarily have that time.”
Hannah Zaborski
Zaborski, who grew up in Holland, started begging her parents to play piano when she was 4. Her mother loved classical music. “For as long as I remember we would have these classical CDs on in the car and I would be singing along,” she said. “I knew all these pieces. I wanted to play that kind of music.” But, she added, “I don’t know why I landed on piano.”
Her family didn’t own a piano, and her parents were reluctant to buy one for a 5-year-old who would then decide she wasn’t interested any more.”
Then a family friend told them they were giving away their piano, and all they had to do was move it.
So young Hannah got her piano, and she didn’t lose interest. “I loved it.”
She was guided by her teacher Linda Smith, of Toledo, and wanted to be a piano teacher “because I loved my teacher.”
Smith had connections to BGSU and talked up the College of Music.
Zaborski, who was home schooled, attended a music discovery day and had a lesson with Solungga Liu. “We connected so well and I just loved her, so this was my top choice.”
During her early years as an undergraduate at BGSU she and Liu had to work through arm injuries, caused by playing. “I had serious injury to both arms. I busted my arms.”
She had to re-learn how to play the piano. Still she was able to compete in the Conrad Art Song Competition. The competition honors both the singer and the pianist. She was paired with tenor Andrew Puschel by Liu. They placed second in 2022 and third in 2023. They are now engaged and planning to marry next year.
In high school, Zaborski did not participate in many competitions. She did do ribbon festivals through the Ohio Music Teachers Association, where she played and received comments from judges. In 2020, she came to BGSU again as a semi-finalist in the Dubois Piano Competition and Festival.
That as well as recitals at BGSU in her junior and senior year helped her control her performance anxiety she experienced in high school at times it would cause memory lapses when performing.
Now she is still anxious before going on stage, but once there she loves performing.
Zaborski chose the Schnittke concerto despite its physical demands. “I really like music that makes me feel something,” she said. While she finds much of other contemporary music “really cool,” she doesn’t have the same emotional connection to it that she does to this piece.
When she heard this concerto, she immediately wanted to play it. “It has a lot of angst. It’s a very stressful piece. I’m a very anxious person. I can get out all my anxiety and nerves playing it.”
Luca Albano
Undergraduate winner pianist Luca Albano also competed in the Dubois competition as a semifinalist. That gave him a chance to visit campus. Born in Italy, his family eventually settled in Rochester, NY. Albano doesn’t remember a time he didn’t play piano.
His mother is a professional flutist who performs with a chamber ensemble she founded, records as a soloist, and teaches. His father is an avocational pianist.
It wasn’t until Albano was a senior in high school that he decided to major in music. “It was a pretty late decision,” he said. “I was generally pretty good at all the academic stuff. But the only thing that I would be happy doing was music. Sure, I could be an engineer, but I don’t think I’d be enjoying my days, every day.”
Family friends had spoken highly of BGSU’s piano program. The Conrad competition in 2022 gave him the opportunity to test the waters.
While here he took a lesson with Liu. “There’s a kind of ecstatic energy about her that’s inspiring,” he said.
And that feeling remains. “Every lesson I feel more inspired. This is the right path.”
Liu suggested he perform the Saint-Saëns. Last year, he competed and played George Gershwin’s Concerto in F.
He received an honorable mention.
While the jazz-influenced Gershwin piece is fun and danceable, it did not showcase all Albano’s skills.
The Saint-Saëns concerto demands more virtuosity and that brings out Albano’s strengths as a musician. It has a certain “wow” factor.
That’s something all four soloists will bring to the Kobacker stage on Saturday night.
