Lois Hicks-Wozniak, www.loishickswozniak.com, is an active concert saxophonist and educator in the New York Metropolitan and the Hudson Valley region, committed to community engagement through new music and Global Music styles. A D’Addario Woodwinds Artist, her many awards include winner of a Special Presentation Winners Recital Series, sponsored by Artists International Presentations; earning her a New York Recital Debut at Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall. She is described in performance as having “tremendous technique and fidelity to tone without sacrificing musical line,” and a “beautiful soprano saxophone sound...preserving the beauty and consistency of her sound regardless of the technical or musical demands of the moment” (Saxophone Symposium). 

 

From 1996-2004 she served active duty in the U.S. Army as a saxophonist with the United States Military Academy Band at West Point, the West Point Saxophone Quartet and as a featured soloist, to include the World Saxophone Congress 2000 in Montreal, where she performed the Glazunov Concerto with the West Point Concert Band. She resigned her position in the Army to take on her most prized role as proud mom of four terrific children. (two sets of twins!)

Her recordings include the album Playback: Music for Saxophone and Bass Trombone with the Plaustra Wozniak Duo and Nadine Shank, piano and the West Point Saxophone Quartet, Fault Lines. Her performances have been broadcast on New York public radio and she has an educational YouTube channel called “TheSaxophoneLady,” featuring frequent audition material for elementary and junior high students.  

 

Maintaining an active schedule as a performer and clinician, appearing as guest soloist with high school, university and community ensembles, performances include the east coast premiere of the Concerto for Soprano Sax and Wind Ensemble by John Mackey with the New Jersey Wind Symphony. An artist-in-residence at Mississippi State University, she performed the Mississippi premiere of Dream Dancer for Alto Saxophone and Wind Ensemble by Michael Colgrass, and she has been a guest of the Ithaca College Saxophone Society. Soloist engagements include the Caramoor Music Festival, the New Jersey Music Educators Association Convention and the Association of Concert Bands Convention. 

 

She served as principal saxophonist with the New Jersey Wind Symphony from 2005-2018, and has performed and recorded with major orchestras to include the New York City Ballet Orchestra, the Albany Symphony, including their album Adventures Underground, featuring works by Del Tredici, a premiere of Adolphus Hailstork’s Symphony No. 4, the new music group Dogs of Desire at the American Music Festival, and the Dallas Wind Symphony recording, Fiesta! As a freelance musician, she has shared the stage with diverse acts from Manhattan Transfer to Milton Berle.

 

With a passion for global music, ethnomusicology, and diversity, equity and inclusion within music education and performance, she has studied South Asian Carnatic percussion and has recorded with Pat Waing master, Kyaw-Kyaw Naing and the first Burmese-American Hsiang Waing ensemble. She is a featured professor in the textbook, World Music Pedagogy Vol VII: Teaching World Music in Higher Education (Routledge 2020), holds a certification in Smithsonian Folkways World Music Pedagogy, and taught courses in Global Music Studies.

 

An advocate of re-imagined chamber music, she co-founded the saxophone/woodwind and percussion trio, Hot Wrk Ensemble, which includes improvisatory music, arrangements and original works, to include her own compositions. Awarded two community arts grants from Arts Mid-Hudson, Hot Wrk presented free community concerts throughout the Hudson Valley, many with awarded-winning guest jazz violinist, Gwen Laster. Lois’s arrangements for Hot Wrk include Medieval and Baroque transcriptions, Jazz, the Beatles, Dolly Parton, Beyonce, and a six-movement Juneteenth Suite with narration. Hot Wrk are featured artists for the Orange County Arts Council Art Affair; awarded a grant to present an integrated work using field recordings collected in Orange County, digital beats, and with composed and improvised musical soundscape that connects community to the natural landscape of Orange County. 

 

She created the innovative saxophone and trombone duo, Plaustra, with her husband. In addition to their album Playback: Music for Saxophone and Bass Trombone, during the 2020 pandemic shut-down, Lois and Matt created “Music Tells a Story,” a recorded local library program for children and care-givers featuring story-telling, enactive music involvement, world music and new music incorporation. Championing new works for this unique ensemble, they have commissioned and premiered works by Kevin Ames, Rob Deemer, Zae Munn, Carter Pann, and Gregory Wanamaker, most recently presenting the world premiere of Zae Munn’s Gnashing of Teeth at the North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference in March 2020. They commissioned and premiered Pann’s Duo for alto saxophone and bass trombone in Washington D.C. at the Eastern Trombone Workshop and were featured performers at the International Trombone Association Conference. Plaustra continues to present concerts throughout the Hudson Valley.

 

Exploring traditional jazz performance, she is an in-demand jazz musician with many NY metropolitan groups.

 

Hicks-Wozniak has previously taught at Montclair State University, Marist College and the State University of New York at New Paltz; Susquehanna University and several summers as artist teaching faculty at the New England Music Camp. With studies at the Interlochen Arts Academy, the University of North Texas, Florida State University, and Montclair State University, her teachers include Dr. Frederick L. Hemke, Patrick Meighan, Debra Richtmeyer and Stacy Wilson. She lives in the Hudson Valley, NY where she has a private saxophone studio and enjoys exercising and hiking.

 

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