Phil Pierick & Casey Dierlam Tse

media release: Mead Witter School of Music Guest Artist Series

Phil Pierick is a saxophonist, improviser, singer, and educator based in Chicago. Equally at home performing a range of music from Renaissance motets to 21st-century works, he has been described as “the Swiss Army knife of saxophonists.” As a soloist and member of the saxophone duo Ogni Suono, he has performed more than 130 recitals worldwide, including teaching engagements at many of America's leading university music programs. Classically trained and experimentally minded, Phil is dedicated to championing the diverse body of vibrant works written for the saxophone in the past century. An emphatic advocate for music by living composers, Phil has commissioned more than twenty-five new works and presented over fifty premieres throughout Europe, North America, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore.

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Casey Dierlam Tse is an avid performer of contemporary music and is devoted to working with and promoting the music of innovative new composers, both through solo performances and collaborative endeavors. She was a recipient of the Urbana Public Arts Grant, won first prize at the Rose Petroff College Piano Competition held in San Antonio, TX, and won the “21st Century Piano Commission Competition,” at the University of Illinois. She has been a finalist at the St. Louis Artist Presentation Society Competition and an alternate for the New Orleans International Piano Competition, and received Honorable Mention in the Bradshaw and Buono International Piano Competition.