Saxophonists

Nicolas Arsenijevic is one of the most talented saxophonists of his generation. He graduated from the Paris Conservatoire (CNSM) in Claude Delangle's class in 2016. For several years, he has been paying his divided attention to contemporary creations, original as well as transcribed compositions, traditional music or even musical theatre.

A multiple prizewinner in numerous international competitions, such as The Gap European Saxophone Competition (France, 2008), the Nova Gorica International Saxophone Competition (Slovenia, 2011), the Chieri International Competition (Italy, 2011), the Flaine Academy (France, 2012), the Andorra Sax Fest International Competition (2015), the prestigious Adolphe Sax International Competition (Dinant, Belgium, 2014), he regularly performs in Paris (Musée Jacquemard-André, Salle Cortot, Théâtre du Châtelet) and throughout Europe (The Netherlands, Scotland, Slovenia, Italy, Serbia, Montenegro) teaching a number of master classes on the spot as well.

A member of several chamber ensembles (Quatuor Laloy, the Saxback Ensemble, the Kosmopolitevitch Orkestar, The Oct’opus Ensemble), Nicolas Arsenijevic devotes part of his time to contemporary creation. His work with young composers at IRCAM (Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music) and CNSMDP (the Paris Conservatoire ) has produced original compositions like Four Bodies in Search of An Author that was created in Paris in 2014.

With pianist Françoise BUFFET, he recorded a CD in 2017 that was devoted to Brahms’s cello and clarinet sonatas transcribed for saxophone and that was met with great acclaim. The pre-release concert took place in November the same year  at the Salle Gaveau.

His next CD (on the Chapeau l’Artiste label) is scheduled for release in June 2020 and will feature a transcription of Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet as well as related contemporary pieces commissioned for the occasion (Riccardo Nillni, Jean-Baptiste Doulcet).

Holding a CA (Certificat d’Aptitude, French equivalent for M.Mus), Nicolas Arsenijevic is a teacher at the Aulnay-sous-Bois Conservatoire (CRD, Conservatoire à Rayonnement Départemental) as well as at the Versailles Conservatoire (CRR, Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional), where he is in charge of a class jointly with Vincent David. He also teaches at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.

Nicolas Arsenijevic is a Selmer artist and has been a laureate of the Cziffra Foundation since 2013.

From the city of Chartres, France, Baptiste Herbin first learned saxophone with Jean-Louis Mounier before studying with Julien Lourau, Jean-Jacques Rulhmann, Jean-Charles Richard and Riccardo Del Fra’s class at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris. Fundamentally his path has been influenced by numerous great names of jazz such as Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley or John Coltrane, but also by the classic composers Bach, Debussy and Ravel. The influences of Malagasy, Brazilian and Balkan music’s have also been determinant.

Amidst these multiple inspirations, Baptiste stands out thanks to his sumptuousness, delicacy and boldness. His virtuosity led him to numerous awards. Thus, thanks to Brother Stoon, his first album, he was nominated for Revelation of the year 2013 at the “Victoires du jazz”. Then, he made his mark amongst the greatest by winning the prestigious 2019 Django Reinhardt prize, “Best Musician of the Year", awarded by the French academy of jazz.

In parallel with his career of musician, Baptiste contributes to the innovation of saxophone and worked in collaboration with Selmer on a new prototype that was released in 2020. He also worked with Vandoren on the creation of a new mouthpiece: the V16S+.

Performing in Europe at the greatest festivals, his worldwide renown led him to work alongside the greatest musicians such as Stefano di Battista, Ed Motta, Charles Aznavour, Roy Hargrove, Alain Jean Marie, Mark Gross or Marcus Gilmore, to name but a few. He also made at least fifty recordings with multiple artists including Keith Brown (Sweet and Lovely, 2011), Aldo Romano (New Blood: the connection, 2012), Fireworks quartet with Jean-Charles Richard, Stéphane Guillaume and Vincent David (2015), O Brasil do saxofonequintet with Ademir Junior (2017) or Darryl Hall (2019).

Modern and imaginative saxophonist, Nicolas Prost blends classical and contemporary styles with improvisation, voice, gesture and electronics. Prize-winner of prestigious Conservatoire de Paris and several international competitions of chamber music, he has appeared as soloist with the Strasbourg Philarmonic Orchestra, The Capitol Orchestra of Toulouse, Ausburg Camerata, London European Camerata, the Mexican Philarmonic, the Symphony Orchestra of Bangkok, the Montreal EMC, the Musiciens de la Pree, the Swiss-Romand Orchestra, among many others.

In addition to his appointment as principal saxophonist for the Concerts Lamoureux Orchestra in Paris, he often performs as a chamber musician on international stages with the chamber ensembles Variances and Saxiana.

His rich discography has been positively reviewed by specialized press, including 5-star reviews from classica and the coveted Diapason d'Or. He is actively involved in the development of the saxophone repertoire and has presented World Premiere performances of over 100 new pieces in different settings – including pieces by Connesson, Escaich, Pécou, Bacri, Zavaro, Hersant, Beffa, Naon, Lauba, Beytelman – but also crossover repertory by Maalouf, Portal, Texier , Potter, Carter, Bojan Z, Emler, Helliwell, Tortiller, Herbin Nicolas Prost is also very active in the domain of music pedagogy and has also composed a series of pieces for young saxophonists as part of the Saxophone Go ! Method (co-authored with Stéphane Colin). In addition to his « Saxiana » collection for Billaudot, the « Adolphe Sax Album » series for Lemoine, the « Historic Sax » collection for Klarthe, and has published 3 books : Saxophone et pédagogie, à vous de jouer ; Saxophone à la française ; and Very Essential Repertoire for saxophonists (in 2 volumes).

Nicolas Prost is the saxophone professor at the Conservatoire de t-Maur in Paris. He is regularly invited to give masterclasses at prestigious universities throughout the world Nicolas Prost is supported by Yamaha Musique Europe

Jure Pukl was awarded highest national award for contribution to Arts in Slovenia in 2015 and is one of the most prolific and creative saxophonists of the younger Slovene jazz generation. Pukl obtained university education abroad and studied classical and jazz saxophone at the University in Vienna as well as at the Haag Conservatory of Music. Pukl then won a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music, where he pursued his studies with masters such as Joe Lovano and George Garzone. He completed his master’s degree in music at the Kunstuniversität Graz.

Throughout his studies Pukl performed and recorded extensively, being engaged in his own projects, as well as working with a number of great musicians from different fields in music such as Dave Liebman, Branford Marsalis, Esperanza Spalding, George Lewis, Maceo Parker, Vijay Iyer, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Gregory Hutchinson, Damion Reid, Darius Jones, Doug Hammond, Gerald Cleaver, Adam Rogers, Melissa Aldana, Rodney Green, Charles Altura, Joe Sanders, Aaron Goldberg, Marcus Gilmore, Johnathan Blake and orchestras like Big Band RTV Slovenia, European Jazz Orchestra, European Movement Jazz Orchestra, Vienna Saxophone Quartet and many others. He has been touring extensively throughout USA, Asia and Europe performing in venues such as Blue Note, Smalls Jazz Club, Jazz Gallery, Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, Vortex, PizzaExpress Jazz Club, Jazz Spot J Tokyo, Club Porgy & Bess and Stadtgarten and festivals like Winter Jazzfest, Moers Festival, Vienna Jazz Festival, Pori Jazz Festival, JazzFest Berlin, Jazz à Vienne and Cairo Jazz Festival, to name a few.

His music has won him many awards and in his auctorial projects, such as the Doubtless, Broken Circles, Abstract Society, MEAT or Sound Pictures, Pukl dedicates himself to modern interpretations of jazz and improvised music.

What he creates is a unique type of modern jazz, avantgarde, free jazz and impressionistic contemporary music. He published 8 albums under his own name and received rave reviews all over the globe among others in the influential Downbeat, The New York Times, Jazzwise, Jazz Podium and All About Jazz. He is also featured on more than 50 other projects as a sideman. 

Kristóf Bacsó was born in Budapest, and started studying the saxophone under Dezső Lakatos Ablakos and Mihály Borbély. He graduated from the jazz department at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music, then continued his studies first at the Conservatoire de Paris and later at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

For five-and-a-half years he lived and worked in France, then the United States, while he also performed in many European countries including the London Jazz Festival, the Pescara and Barcelona Jazz Festivals, and in several famous jazz clubs (Sunset, Sunside, Porgy and Bess, Pizza Express, New Morning, Cotton Club Tokyo, etc.). He has played in line-ups of a wide variety of styles from mainstream jazz, through ethno music, to contemporary music, with renowned musicians such as Lionel Loueke, Ferenc Nemeth, Gilad Hekselman, Tony Lakatos, etc..

He has been working with Gábor Gadó since the end of the 1990s; he participated on his records Modern Dances, Psyche and Lung-Gom-Pa and was a soloist on the releases Agent Spirituel and Different Garden by Gábor Winand, which were composed by Gábor Gadó. He has regularly played with the well-known piano player - Kálmán Oláh - since 2004, and in 2006 they released a trio album entitled Fitting, featured Sébastien Boisseau on bass. As a soloist he performed the piece of Oláh Concerto for Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Band.

He frequently works with his trio, the Kristof Bacso Triad, the Kálmán Oláh Sextet and the Hungarian high-level big-band - the Modern Art Orchestra, in which he is featured as a soloist, arranger and composer. In 2014 the BMC Records released a new album of Modern Art Orchestra – called Circular – on which all the music is composed and arranged by Bacsó. In 2011 his composition Lunar Dance got into the final of the International Composer’s Contest of the Brussels Jazz Orchestra.

With his formation he performs his own compositions, in which jazz and contemporary music are combined with a central-eastern European spirit. They played in many festivals in Hungary and in Europe and Asia and released two albums in the past years entitled Alteregos and Nocturne. His new album – called Pannon Blue featured Lionel Loueke- is released in 2016 at BMC Records, he got the “Album Of the Year” from the prestigous Gramofon Magazine.

Currently he is the Head of the Jazz Department of Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music.

Erzsébet Seleljo studied saxophone with Kyle Horch at the Royal College of Music in London and with Lars Mlekusch at the Konservatorium Wien Privatuniversität, she completed her doctoral studies at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest.

She has won several national and foreign competitions, and recieved scholarships such as Liszt Academy Network and KLASSZ. During her studies she participated in masterclasses led by Claude Delangle, Arno Bornkamp, Nobuya Sugawa and many other world reknowned saxophonists. She also took part in several educational workshops run by London Sinfonietta, English Chamber Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

As a soloist Erzsébet performed the saxophone concertos of Glazunov and Dubois with the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, she premiered András G. Virágh's Concerto with the Liszt Academy Symphony Orchestra and also played Hidas' Sax Fantasy with Győr Symphonic Band. She is often involved in contemporary projects, she has worked with Slovakian Quasars Ensemble and with UMZE, the Hungarian contemporary ensemble.

She has also taken part in international chamber music festivals such as Vibrate! Festival in Brasov (Romania), Opus Amadeus Festival in Istambul (Turkey), or Academic Chamber Music Festival in St Petersburg (Russia).

She frequently plays with her pianist sister Irén, is a member of saxophone-harp duo called Duo SeRa and collaborates with other instrumentalists as well. Besides performing original repertoire, Erzsébet is commited to premiering new works and promoting Hungarian music.

Erzsébet currently teaches saxophone at the Bartók Béla Secondary School of Music and at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest.