Susan Fancher is one of the pioneers of her generation of saxophonists.  Her work has produced dozens of commissioned works by contemporary composers, as well as published transcriptions of music by composers as diverse as Josquin Desprez and Steve Reich.  Her career has featured hundreds of concerts internationally as a soloist and as the member of chamber music ensembles, including the Red Clay, Amherst, Vienna and Rollin' Phones saxophone quartets.  A sought after performer of new music, she has worked with a multitude of composers including Terry Riley, Charles Wuorinen, Philip Glass, Hilary Tann, Friedrich Cerha, M. William Karlins, Mark Engebretson, Ben Johnston, Ed Campion, Perry Goldstein, Olga Neuwirth, Stuart Saunders Smith, David Stock, Michael Torke, Robert Carl, Alejandro Rutty and Paul Chihara, just to name a few.

 

Susan Fancher has performed in many of the world's leading concert venues including Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, the Amphitheater at the Chautauqua Institution, London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, Vienna's Musikverein and Konzerthaus, Filharmonia Hall in Warsaw, Orchestra Hall in Malmö, Sweden, the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, and at ISCM festivals in Albania and Bulgaria, the Gaida Festival in Lithuania, June in Buffalo, the North Carolina Computer Music Festival, the Festival of New American Music, the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, Hörgänge and Wien Modern Festivals in Vienna, and on CBS Sunday Morning.  Tours have taken her to Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and throughout the US.

 

Susan Fancher has recorded over 10 CDs available on the Philips, New World Records, Lotus Records Salzburg, Extraplatte and Innova labels.  Her first solo recording Ponder Nothing, released in 2002 on the Innova label, features her composer-approved arrangements of music by Steve Reich and Ben Johnston.  Her second solo CD Aeterna will appear in 2008, also on the Innova label, featuring music by John Anthony Lennon, James Paul Sain, Mark Engebretson, Reginald Bain, Judith Shatin, Morton Subotnick and Edmund Campion.

 

Susan Fancher is a regularly featured columnist for the nationally distributed Saxophone Journal.  She holds the Médaille d'Or from the Conservatoire of Bordeaux, France, and the Doctor of Music in saxophone performance from Northwestern University, for which her dissertation topic was the saxophone music of Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988).  Her principal teachers were classical saxophone masters Frederick Hemke, Jean-Marie Londeix and Michael Grammatico, and Chicago jazz legend Joe Daley.  Susan Fancher is a clinician for the Selmer and Vandoren companies and teaches saxophone at Duke University.