Based on the West Coast of the United States Jitazax performers Wenjun Qi, guitar and Rhett Bender, saxophone; create a musical intersection for trans-pacific collaboration. Jitazax performs concerts featuring their interpretations of Chinese music and compositions for the guitar-saxophone duo. In the spring of 2018 they will tour China and Taiwan performing in Yantai, Zhengzhou, Nantong, Dali, Chengdu, and Taipei. Wenjun and Rhett Bender frequent soloist with international orchestras and are professors of music at the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University.
Wenjun Qi teaches guitar at the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University. She has won First Prize at the Fifth National Guitar Competition of China, both as a soloist and as part of a duet, and the American Guitar Society Bickford Award. Wenjun has performed concerts in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Zhengzhou, Xi’an and Fuzhou. Wenjun earned a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music where she studied with Brian Head, Scott Tennant, and William Kanengiser.
Rhett Bender is a Professor of Music at the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University. He is the soprano saxophonist with the Globe Saxophone Quartet and the Director of the Siskiyou Saxophone Orchestra. Bender is a guest artist-teacher at the Sichuan Conservatory of Classical Music in Chengdu, China and a Visiting Professor of Music at the School of Arts of Yantai University. He is the Region 1 Director of the North American Saxophone Alliance. Bender earned degrees from Iowa State University (BM) and the University of Georgia (MM, DMA) where he was a student of Kenneth Fischer.

http://saxophone.sou.edu

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