It was a joy for us to recently premiere four new works for flutes, saxophones, and electronics in St. Paul, MN on our concert series James Carville and Mary Matalin are Impressive. We played at Studio Z and Dreamland Arts, which also featured a pre-concert talk by the composers on their works. Thanks to everyone who came out! We also spent an afternoon recording at the Art Institute in downtown Minneapolis. Stay tuned for some new sounds soon! 

If you want to read the program from the event it is online HERE!

FREE concerts coming up in St. Paul, MN! Come hear us Friday night, April 10 at Studio Z then come back Saturday April 11 for another round at Dreamland Arts. We will have the composers with us Friday night for a pre-concert talk with a small reception to follow! 

The past two weeks, we performed our Different Worlds program and gave lectures and masterclasses at Northeastern State University, Millersville College, and Lafayette College! We were delighted to perform on the Old Wood New Sounds concert series as well which had amazing wine pairings by The Vineyard at Grandview. After our tour, we spent a few days in New York visiting the Yamaha Atelier, seeing some amazing art exhibits, and visiting old friends! 

AVIDduo will play a recital in the Old Wood New Sounds at St. James Episcopal Church. Several pieces on the program will have wine and cheese pairings from The Vineyard at Grandview, which is included in the ticket price. Audience members will also receive a live recording of the concert delivered to their inbox.

Program consists of music by Joshua Clausen, Anna E. Garman, Kendra Kestner, Tyler Kline, Marc Mellits, Sam Melnick, Mark Oliveiro, and Kirk O'Riordan.

Hope to see you there!

AVIDduo traveled with composer Ted Moore to Iowa to perform at Luther College in Decorah, IA and Coe College in Cedar Rapids, IA. Many thanks to Brooke Joyce and Zach Zubow for hosting us! Following our trip to Iowa, AVIDduo traveled to the University of Illinois for a performance at the NASA2014 Conference.

Join us this coming Sunday, June 1st at 4:15 pm at Rock & Bach Performing Arts School for the final concert of our Music 1st DFW tour!  We will present a recital of original works for the flute and saxophone in an intimate setting.  The concert is free and open to the public- We hope to see you there!

The Flute View Magazine reviewed our Interactions CD in their May 2014 edition!  

"The last work on this release is Peter John’s Asteroid Baptistina. This asteroid is the one that is believed to have brought about the end of the age of dinosaurs and the beginning of a new era. He relates this idea to the current status of classical music: how do classical performers relate to new technology? John answers this question by combining flute and saxophone sounds and remixing them to deliver a convincing work that is a nice closer to this album."

"If you are interested in expanding your knowledge of flute and saxophone repertoire or if you have such an ensemble, there is certainly plenty of inspiration here."

Subscribe today and read the full review here.
Purchase our debut album Interactions here.

THANK YOU to everyone who made it out to our CD release party in February!  We are so honored to share our music with you, including the world premiere of Sam Melnick's Tesseract.  This is the first time we have played a recital consisting of only commissioned music for our ensemble.  We are so thankful to all of our composers, musicians, supporters, family, and friends for making this CD a reality!  

If you were unable to make it to the event, but still wish to purchase an Interactions CD, click here to order online from the AVIDduo store.  (It's also available on CD Baby and iTunes.)  We will also have CDs for purchase at our upcoming performances in Iowa at Luther College and Coe College and in Illinois at the NASA Conference.

Thank you to Jeremy Powell Photography for the following pictures of the event.

See you at NASA!

As we prepare for our upcoming performances in the Czech Republic later this month, we thought it would be nice to post about the new pieces which were written for us this season! All of these pieces are on our program in Czech, and will be recorded in the upcoming months. Both the music and recordings will be available later this fall to anyone else wishing to perform some of this great duet music for the flute and saxophone! 

Synergy (2011)
Chris Reza, NY

Synergy, a work written for AVIDduo, is about the formation of a single being through the combining of two separate entities. This new entity has an effect that is greater than the two individual parts. While one can say this is representative of all collaborative musical works, and of all reality, this piece was explicitly written with this concept in mind.  Mr. Reza is honored to have had Brittany Primavera and Jeffery Kyle Hutchins premiere Synergy at the 35th Navy Band Symposium at George Mason University, as well as perform it internationally.

Leonardo’s Sketchbook (2011)
Kirk O’Riordan, PA
I. quasi-cadenza; insistent, with energy
II. misterioso; very freely
III. legatissimo, senza espressione
IV. simplice ma ritmico, legatissimo sempre
V. cadenza; impulsive
VI. freely; with energy
VII. slowly; senza espressione

Leonardo’s Sketchbook was commissioned by the Phi Tau Chapter of Mu Phi Epsilon at the University of North Texas for AVIDduo: Brittany Primavera, flute; Jeffery Kyle Hutchins, saxophone.
Leonardo’s Sketchbook plays on the idea of an inventor writing down ideas for inventions in a notebook.  The “inventions” are similar to Bach’s Inventions…two part works that are highly imitative and employ on occasion some fancy contrapuntal tricks, like mirror canons, etc.  Like some of the inventor’s ideas, some are more developed than others… some elaborate, some very simple.  They are performed without pause.

Falling to the Sea (2012)
John Richard, MI

As I was composing Falling to the Sea and thinking about the primary melodic gesture of the piece, I imagined a small mountain stream twisting among the rocks and dropping from the cliffs as it flowed towards the ocean.  It’s not that the music I wrote evokes alpine meadows and waterfalls, but the image I had of flowing and falling water was analogous to the floating and descending gestures that shape the piece.  These gestures appear in several forms throughout the music.  In the beginning, the saxophone’s long, floating tones create a sense of motionlessness (interrupted by the flute’s short bursts) before the melodic line begins to descend in pitch and accelerate, the sax eventually joining in with the flute’s twisting chromatic figures.  In another instance, the flute and sax play high, sustained pitches that descend chromatically together as they accelerate.  And this is the gesture—falling and picking up speed—that is elaborated and developed throughout the piece and which forms the main structural material of the work.  There is another important gesture found in the fast, chromatic, twisting fragments that begin and end the composition.  They develop in a different manner than the “falling” gesture, transformed in the middle section of the piece into slow, winding, melodies.  Falling to the Sea was written for the AVIDduo, Brittany Primavera, flute and Jeffery Kyle Hutchins, saxophone.

Interactions (2012)
Lenka Štůralová, CZ

The piece Interactions was composed in autumn 2011 in Ostrava, Czech Republic for AVIDduo.  The main body of the piece is focused on constant interactions between two elements, represented by the flute and the saxophone, whose coexistence is developing in a variety of ways which continuously change, but ultimately lead to an agreeable ending.

Avocado at Midnight (2011)
Jeffery Kyle Hutchins, MN

Composed for AVIDduo, Avocado at Midnight is the first movement of a larger work titled Fruit Pieces, which may be performed together or separately. Each short movement is based on an ear-worm idea that somehow got stuck in my head and found it’s way to paper. The other movements Tangerine at Twilight and Pineapple at Noon, like the first movement, more or less have nothing to do with fruit or time, except that they are short and sweet. And probably a little fruity.