Award winning saxophonist and composer Brett McDonald, recently chosen as a semifinalist in the 2012 North American Saxophone Alliance (NASA) Jazz Saxophone Competition and selected as a winner of the 2012 Jazz Education Network’s (JEN) Composition Prize recently completed performing on flute and saxophone with the 2012-2013 International touring company of the Tony and Grammy Award winning musical Dreamgirls. McDonald has also received awards from Downbeat Magazine for an Outstanding Performance – Jazz Soloist (2011), and an ASCAP Young Jazz Composers Award – honourable mention (2011).
In 2011 after a nation-wide audition, Brett was selected as a member of the Yamaha All-American College Band at Disneyland, where he had the opportunity to perform with such artists as Arturo Sandoval, John Clayton, Gregg Field and Sal Lozano.
While a Masters student and part-time lecturer of Jazz History at Rutgers University, McDonald shared the stage with jazz greats Conrad Herwig, Frank Lacy, Stanley Cowell, Joe Magnarelli and Victor Lewis. Studying under the acclaimed jazz saxophonist and pedagogue Ralph Bowen at Rutgers, Brett also had the opportunity to perform and premiere an original composition at the renowned Blue Note jazz club in New York City. Prior to his studies at Rutgers, McDonald earned his undergraduate degree Magnus Cum Laude from The University of North Texas (UNT) for Jazz Studies, the oldest and largest program of its kind. His award winning performances (Downbeat 2011) and composition “The Beat in Progress” (JEN 2011, ASCAP 2011) are recorded on the Downbeat Student Music Award winning Two O’clock Lab Band album “Under The Radar” .
As an arranger, transcriber and engraver, McDonald’s work has been performed at Bass Hall in Forth Worth, The Rafael Mendez Brass Institute in Denver, and The Blue Note in New York City. Recent commissions for arrangements and compositions span a diversity of instrumentation from solo saxophone, to brass quintet to 18-piece big band. As a music engraver and copyist, McDonald prepared music for the great Lyle Mays for Mays’ feature concert with the world-famous UNT One O’Clock Lab Band in 2011.
As a multiple woodwind specialist, Brett has performed on flutes, clarinets and saxophones on musicals at North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, MA, Surflight Theatre in Beach Haven, NJ and, as a member of the 2013 International Tour of Dreamgirls, in theatres in over 25 other states and provinces. In August 2013, McDonald performed in Japan at the newly renovated Festival Hall in Osaka and at the recently completed Tokyu Orb Theatre in Tokyo.
In addition to his musical endeavours, Brett pursues an active outdoor lifestyle enjoying alpine scrambling, racquetball, sailing and soccer.