Joonatan RAUTIOLA, saxophone teaching

Saxophonist Joonatan Rautiola is one of today's most recognized young Finnish soloists and a brilliant representative of the new generation of Nordic classical wind players.

 

Joonatan Rautiola studied at the Sibelius Academy under Pekka Savijoki and in Paris with Nicolas Prost and Christian Wirth. In 2010 he became the first Nordic saxophonist having graduated from Claude Delangle's world-renowned Paris Conservatory saxophone class. His other teachers include clarinetist Paul Meyer and legendary oboist Maurice Bourgue.

 

Joonatan Rautiola has appeared as a soloist with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Düsseldorfer Symfoniker, Mecklenburgische Staatskapelle Schwerin, Het Kamerorkest Brugge, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Kymi Sinfonietta, Mikkeli Orchestra and with several professional Nordic wind orchestras. He has given recitals in London, Dublin, St. Petersbourg and at New York's Carnegie Hall. During a five-year long membership in the award-winning Quatuor Ellipsos, Rautiola performed in prestigious French concert venues such as the salle Pleyel and Radio France, and appeared together with world-class artists and ensembles - Eric le Sage, Jean-François Zygel and the Quatuor Voce.

 

An active performer of contemporary music, Joonatan Rautiola has premiered works by Patrick Marcland, Tapio Tuomela, Olli Virtaperko, Tuomas Turriago, Gerald Shapiro, Yann Robin, Mandy Fang, Jorge Sancho, Ilkka Hammo and Christian Lauba, and has received tuition from the composers Pierre Boulez and Betsy Jolas. September 2011, Joonatan Rautiola recorded Patrick Marcland's Saxo-solo for tenor saxophone and tape for an album with the composer's complete solo works, most of the other works being recorded by world-renowned Ensemble Intercontemporain's soloists.

 

Joonatan Rautiola is the only wind instrumentist having won the Finnish National Radio’s Young Soloists’ Competition. His numerous prizes in international competitions include first prizes at the Nordic Wind Soloists' Competition and the Nova Gorica International Saxophone Competition, third prize and two special prizes at the International Aeolus Competition for Wind Instruments and fourth prize at the International Adolphe Sax Saxophone Competition in Dinant, Belgium.

 

Equally in demand as a teacher, Joonatan Rautiola teaches at the Sibelius Academy and at the Tampere Music Academy and has given masterclasses at the Helsinki, Nantes and Strasbourg Conservatoires, Senzoku Gakuen College of Music (Tokyo) and the Trinity College of Music (London). Since 2012, he has taught at the Bretagne International Saxophone Academy with Alexandre Souillart and Hiroe Yasui.

 

In 2013, Joonatan Rautiola premieres Tapio Tuomela's Saxophone Concerto with the Joensuu Orchestra, appears as a soloist with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, the Mikkeli Orchestra and the Finnish Guard Band and gives masterclasses in Latvia and Portugal.

 

Joonatan Rautiola plays saxophones by Henri Selmer Paris and reeds by Rico.

Alexandre SOUILLART, saxophone teaching

Alexandre Souillart studied at the Paris Conservatoire in Claude Delangle’s saxophone class (Master Degree and Soloist Diploma), chamber music with Laszlo Hadady (Master Degree) and free improvisation with Alexandros Markeas and Vincent Lê Quang. Concerts in France and abroad have served to further establish his musical personality.

 

Deeply engaged in contemporary music, Alexandre Souillart actively collaborates with several composers. His first CD features new works for tenor saxophone with various configurations. Frédéric Durieux’s Übersicht II for solo tenor saxophone (dedicated to A. Souillart), and Philippe Leroux’s Un Lieu Verdoyant for voice and saxophone are world premiere recordings.

 

Highly sought as an orchestral saxophonist, he played Berio’s Sinfonia with the Ensemble Intercontemporain conducted by Jonathan Nott (2011), and has performed with the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris as well as the Ensemble Itinéraire.

 

Dedicated chamber musician, Alexandre Souillart founded the Duo Atyopsis with the pianist Matthieu Acar. The duo actively seeks to enlarge the repertoire for saxophone and piano and has encouraged several composers to write works for it. Atyopsis has performed in France, Italy, Great Britain, Greece, Peru and Colombia and was invited at the Automn Festival of the Palazzetto Bru Zane (Venice) where it gave its historical overview program “From Berlioz to Debussy”.

 

Alexandre Souillart is a member of the Osmose Saxophone Quartet,, specialized in new music and in saxophone pedagogy. The group has appeared throughout Europe, from the Balkans to Great Britain, and has been invited to perform and give conferences in Taiwan. Osmose Saxophone Quartet recently performed Glazounov’s Saxophone Quartet at the Salle Pleyel and gave a premiere of their new pedagogical program “Four for Tango” at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.

 



Alexandre Souillart teaches at the Clamart Conservatoire-CRD (Paris), as well as at the Bretagne International Saxophone Academy which he founded in 2012. He has given numerous master classes in Europa, Asia and Latin America.

 

Alexandre Souillart is supported by the Meyer Foundation, the Société Générale bank and the Tarrazzi Funds. In 2010, he was a laureate of the Oriolis-Kriegelstein Foundation.

 

Alexandre Souillart is a Henri Selmer-Paris and Vandoren artist.

Hiroé YASUI, saxophone teaching

Top prize winner at the 2008 Tokyo International Wind and Percussion Competition and first Japanese saxophonist to enter the Paris Conservatoire 3rd cycle, Hiroe Yasui pursues a double musical career in France and in Japan.

 

Having first studied with Nobuya Sugawa and Kazuo Tomioka at the Tokyo Geidai University, Hiroe Yasui entered the graduate cycle of Claude Delangle's Paris Conservatoire saxophone class and the free improvisation and chamber music classes of the same institution. Devoted to contemporary performance, Hiroe Yasui has helped to create works making use of new technologies, collaborating with IRCAM's composers amoung others. Her work has resulted in the birth of new works combining music with visual media, most notably Masakazu Natsuda's Danse sacrée, danse profane au Pays d'extreme Orient, commissionned and premiered with Claude Delangle (first performance in May 2012, Paris).

 

Prizewinner at several international competitions (1st prizes at Adolphe Sax-Paris and UFAM international competitions, 2nd prize at the Nova Gorica international saxophone competition), Hiroe Yasui has received grants from the foundations Nomura (Japan) and Meyer (France).

 

Particularly interested in orchestral playing, she has performed with the most important orchestras of Japan. She regularly plays with the Siena Wind Orchestra and recently participated in a recording in Tokyo, directed by Yutaka Sado.

 

An active chamber musician, Hiroe Yasui performs with piano, voice and electronics and with the duo Atyopsis (Alexandre Souillart, saxophone and Matthieu Acar, prepared piano). With the duo Atyopsis, she was invited to the Lima International Contemporary Music Festival (Peru), where the trio gave world premieres of five new works by Latin American composers - a concert project that was later regiven in Columbia.

 

Hiroe Yasui teaches the saxophone at the "Conservatoire à Rayonnement Départemental" of Argenteuil and Puteaux (Paris region). Since 2011, she has taught at the Bretagne International Saxophone Academy.

Haruka EGAWA, pianist

A native of Japan, pianist Haruka Egawa leads an active career as a soloist, chamber musician, and accompanist. Ms. Egawa studied with Yumiko Meguri at the Toho College of Music in Japan, prior to her studies in France at the Paris Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional, where she studied with Yves Henry and graduated with first class honors in 2014. Ms. Egawa completed her graduate degrees in 2019 at the Paris National Conservatory in solo piano under the tutelage of Michel Dalberto and Claire-Marie Le Guay, and chamber music with Itamar Golan, Claire Désert, and François Salque.

 

Additional areas of study include a diploma in harmony studies in 2018, a diploma in counterpoint studies in 2020, and a diploma in fugue and sonata theory in 2021. 

 

In 2022, Ms. Egawa completed her Bachelor’s degree in Accompaniment at the top of the class. Since 2022, she has been pursuing her Master’s degree in Accompaniment under Jean-Frédéric Neuburger and Yumi Otsu, and orchestration under Guillaume Connesson. Since 2017, Ms. Egawa has been a scholarship student of Fondation Meyer.

 

In 2022, Ms. Egawa performed the celesta with the L’Orchestre National de France at the Auditorium de la Maison de la Radio and the Philharmonie de Paris. 

 

Ms. Egawa has won prizes in competitions including at the 7th International Piano Competition Milan “Piano Talents" in 2017, and third place at the Yokohama International Piano Competition. She has participated in a number of international festivals and academies, including MusicAlp and Nice (France), Cagliari (Italy), International Keyboard Institute and Festival (New York City), Internationale Mendelssohn Akademie Leipzig (Germany), and Clara Haskil (Switzerland). Ms. Egawa has also been invited as a guest soloist at the Gent Festival in Belgium. 

 

Additionally, Ms. Egawa actively holds concerts in Tokyo and Paris ranging from solo recitals, to collaborations with jazz dance, as well as chamber music.

Miyu KODA, coordination

Born in Japan, saxophonist Miyu KODA studied at the Showa Music University (Kanagawa) and joined the conservatory of Cergy-Pontoise in the class of Jean-Yves Fourmeau in 2013. She obtains her DEM and the first prize unanimously of the jury in perfection course.

 

She participates in the International Saxophone Academy of Brittany in 2014 and 2015.

 

Since 2015 she studies in the Clamart Conservatoire in Alexandre Souillart saxophone class.


 

She won the First Prize of the Paris Competition (2016), the 2nd Prize of the International Saxophone Competition (2016), the 2nd Prize of the FISP Competition in Portugal (2016) and the 2nd Prize of the 8th International Competition of Nantes (2017).

 

She received a scholarship at Showa Music University (2014).


 

Miyu KODA is professor of saxophone at the École de Musique du Pays Fertois and Le Cercle

Musique de Maurecourt.

 

Passionate about pedagogy, she joined CEFEDEM (teacher training center for dance and music) in Normandy in 2017.

Miho HAKAMADA, coordination

Miho Hakamada was born in Ichinomiya, Aichi, Japan. She started  to play the saxophone when she was 10 years old in the brass band club as a hobby and received her first lesson with a saxophone professor when she was 12 years old.

 

She graduated from Kobe University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Art Managements. While focusing on the art management studies, she also continuously following her passion for the saxophone and find time to work on the saxophone repertoire, during the school years, she was a member of an amateur brass band club.

 

During her exchange-student program in Paris-Diderot University in the faculty of literature and arts (2015-2016), she was inspired and decided to began her professional saxophone career after she had turned 21 years old. She entered Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Paris (Conservatoire Municipal Jean-Philippe Rameau ) and worked with Professor Chiharu Lemarié where she graduated with a DEM degree in 2017.

 

She participates in the International Saxophone Academy of Brittany in 2016 and 2018. She is currently studying with Professor Claude Delangle at Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris since 2017. She also studies in chamber music class (Saxophone and Piano) with Professor Jens McManama.

 

In 2019, she received the 6th prize at the 7th Concours Internationale Adolphe Sax in Dinant. She is also laureate of 1st prize unanimously at the 8th Concours International de Nante in 2017.

 

Beside being a saxophonist, she is also involved in organizing art projects and concerts such as the international art festivals, educational concerts and restoration art projects (Kobe,Tokyo) since she was in Kobe University.