IC Faculty Member Wins International Music Award

By Sherrie Negrea, December 19, 2019

Steven Banks is the first saxophonist to win the prestigious competition.

Steven Banks performs a solo at Carnegie Hall.

(Photo submitted)

Steven Banks has become the first saxophonist to win the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, a prestigious award that has launched the careers of many world-renowned musicians in its 58-year history.

Banks, an assistant professor of saxophone at Ithaca College, received one of four first prizes after the final round of the 2019 auditions on November 17 in New York City. The award presents winners in debut recitals in New York and Washington, D.C., and offers a three-year comprehensive management contract to book performances around the world.

“I’m extremely excited about the opportunities that this opens up for me as well as for the classical saxophone community,” Banks said. “It’s surreal and certainly something that I’ll always look back on as a life-changing moment.”

Musicians who participate in the Young Concert Artists Auditions must be between the ages of 16 and 26. Previous winners have included the pianist Emanuel Ax, the violinist Pinchas Zukerman, and the soprano Dawn Upshaw.

Banks is a member of the Kenari quartet, which he co-founded in 2012 at Indiana University.

Banks, who started teaching at the School of Music in August, is the first IC professor to win the Young Concert Artists Auditions. Since joining the faculty, Banks has been teaching private lessons, coaching chamber groups, and teaching a repertoire and pedagogy class for saxophone students.

Michael Galván, a professor of clarinet at IC, said the award is not only a personal achievement for Banks, but also an opportunity to promote the music program at IC.

“When aspiring saxophone students are looking at schools and they see that Steven Banks is performing at the Kennedy Center, how can that not tip them off that there’s someone special here to work with?” Galvan said. “It shows a level of attainment and a level of music-making that goes on here.”

For his audition at the Young Concert Artists, Banks performed four pieces that demonstrated his skill playing the range of the saxophone repertoire. He played two pieces for soprano saxophone, a concerto for alto saxophone, and one of his own compositions for baritone saxophone.

A native of Winston-Salem, N.C., Banks started off playing piano and then clarinet but switched to saxophone in the seventh grade. “It has lots of keys and lots of shiny parts which looked kind of complicated, and to my brain at that point, that was sort of cool,” he recalled.

“When aspiring saxophone students are looking at schools and they see that Steven Banks is performing at the Kennedy Center, how can that not tip them off that there’s someone special here to work with?”

Michael Galván, professor of clarinet

For the last two years of high school, Banks attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. His teacher at the school, Taimur Sullivan, would eventually become his mentor at Northwestern University, where Banks earned a master of music in saxophone performance in 2017. He studied with Otis Murphy as an undergraduate at Indiana University.

While he has played and taught jazz, Banks has always preferred classical music. Since 2017, he has performed with The Cleveland Orchestra and has also been a member of the Kenari Quartet, which he co-founded in 2012 at Indiana University.

“There is more orchestral repertoire that includes saxophone than many people realize, including music by Mussorgsky, Bartók, Ravel, and Berg,” Banks said. “Many twenty-first-century composers are excited by the capabilities of the saxophone and are writing for the instrument more regularly than ever before.”

His debut recitals through the Young Concert Artists haven’t been scheduled yet, but Banks expects they will take place in 2021. He believes the exposure the award offers will not only promote his own playing, but also bring recognition to the classical saxophone repertoire.

“I think it gives us an opportunity to establish ourselves,” he said. “Changes in perception are not instant, but it gives us a chance to be on the stages where we can be heard.”