Charles Stolte

Charles Stolte is Associate Professor of Music Theory, Composition and Saxophone at The King's University College in Edmonton, Alberta and Instructor of Saxophone at Alberta College Conservatory of Music. CBC radio has broadcast his performances and compositions across Canada and his music enjoys performances across North America and in Europe. He has per-formed for, and his compositions have been performed for, such musical luminaries as Jean-Marie Londeix, Claude Delangle, Marta Ptaszynska, Gunther Schuller, Ned Rorem, Frederick Rzewski, John Corigliano and Henryk Gorecki.

Stolte has presented his music, and music writ-ten for him, at conferences throughout North America and he was a featured composer and per-former at World Saxophone Congress XII in Montréal and XIII in Minneapolis. He can be heard on a variety of recordings as a saxophone soloist, as alto saxophonist with the Edmonton Saxophone Quartet and as tenor saxophonist with IMPULS Saxophone Quartet. In 2006, along with pianist Joachim Segger, Dr. Stolte toured Europe playing contemporary Canadian repertoire, appearing in such centres as Berlin, Lodz and Szczecin (the latter two in Poland).

He has had the benefit of glowing review in the Chicago Tribune (for his performance of Ned Rorem's Picnic on the Marne the reviewer called him a "talented performer with glossy technique and bluesy charm" ), and in Classical Music magazine (whose reviewer praised him as a "talented and versatile musician").

In 2000, Canada Council for the Arts awarded Charles an Outreach Grant for the premiere in Montréal of Last Transfer, his large work for saxophone quartet, two pianos and two percussion, and The Alberta Foundation for the Arts has funded commissions for several recent works. Dr. Stolte has served on the faculties of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Roosevelt University and the University of Alberta.

He holds a Doctor of Music degree in Saxophone Performance from Northwestern University, where he was the first Canadian accepted to the doctoral program for study with renowned saxophonist and pedagogue, Dr. Frederick L. Hemke. Dr. Stolte also holds degrees from University of Alberta and The King's University College. His teachers include Frederick L. Hemke, William H. Street, Howard Bashaw, Malcolm Forsyth, M. William Karlins and Jay Alan Yim. With his wife Natalie and their daughter Brigid, he enjoys living in Edmonton where the season is short, but the golf is cheap.