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Paradise WindsParadise Winds, a Phoenix-based reed quintet, met while pursuing graduate studies at Arizona State University and have been performing together since 2009. Recipients of the February 2018 Silver Medal - Outstanding Achievement by the Global Music Awards, Paradise Winds appeared to over a million weekly listeners on American Public Media’s Performance Today in 2011 and 2013. In recent past, Paradise Winds was featured guests of the Arizona Wind Symphony, and premiered an original commission, Eyes to See Them, Lips to Tell by Alyssa Morris in Granada, Spain. Individual members of Paradise Winds have appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, New World Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, AIMS Festival Orchestra (Graz, Austria), Wintergreen Summer Music Festival (Virginia, USA), and in Arizona with the Phoenix Symphony, Tucson Symphony Orchestra, Arizona MusicFest, Arizona Opera, and Ballet Arizona. The quintet has performed at annual conferences for the International Double Reed Society (IDRS) held in United States, Asia, and Europe, and for the International Clarinet Association conference and North American Saxophone Alliance conferences in the United States. Active teachers, members of Paradise Winds hold positions at Arizona State University, the Maricopa Community Colleges (Phoenix-area), the Musical Instrument Museum, give local educational seminars, and have served in positions and residencies at colleges and music programs in the Western U.S. and abroad in Europe and the Middle East. Agents of new repertoire, Paradise Winds has commissioned works by Deborah Kavasch, John Marvin, Robbie McCarthy, Kurt Mehlenbacher, Alyssa Morris, James Cohn, Jamie Leigh Sampson, and Kincaid Rabb, as well as participated in the 2018 Calefax Composition Competition, judging along with the world’s reed quintets. They have also premiered the first-ever North American concerto grosso for reed quintet and orchestra by Graham Cohen. Their most recent album, Journey on a Comet’s Tail, was released in 2017 on the Soundset Recordings label, and they are currently preparing a new release featuring music by Alyssa Morris, Robbie McCarthy, Christopher Weait, and Marc Mellits. Website: https://paradisewinds.org/ |