Ariel Williams Archives - Mason Community Arts Academy

Congratulations to our music faculty for a splendid evening of music and voice at yesterday’s Fairfax, Spotlight on the Arts festival performance. Our theme this year was music from film and television.

Pieces ranged from the main theme of Interstellar, performed by Dr. Nayoon Choi on flute and Dr. Estrella Hong accompanying on piano, to a selection of pieces from Star Wars and The Hobbit, performed by a guitar trio of Geoff Sawyer, Brian Slaymaker, and Hang Yin.

This year was our highest attendance to date with 150 attendees! We look forward to more performances by our faculty in the future and we hope to see you for next year’s Spotlight performance.

This performance was made possible with the generous support of the City of Fairfax Commission on the Arts.

Ariel Williams, Academy Assistant Coordinator of Programs and Saxophone Instructor since 2017, had the opportunity to contribute to the development of a newly published saxophone method book, Playing & Teaching the Saxophone: A Modern Approach. While she was studying for her master’s degree in classical saxophone performance at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Ariel worked alongside authors Dr. Allison Adams and Brian Horner to create and edit the graphics for the musical examples in the book.

“I was Dr. Adams’s graduate teaching assistant as they were completing the book, and it was wonderful to be able to play a small part in the development of this fantastic new resource in modern saxophone pedagogy.”

Ariel

According to the publisher, Oxford University Press, “Playing & Teaching the Saxophone: A Modern Approach provides a method for teaching the saxophone that is specific enough to use as a textbook in a collegiate saxophone methods class, simple enough for band directors to use in guiding their saxophone sections, clear enough for adult beginners to teach themselves the instrument, and deep enough for professionals to use as a resource in teaching private lessons at any level.” The book is available from the publisher as well as through Amazon.

Edited by Regina Schneider