Rousseau, Eugene
Rousseau, Eugene
Rousseau, Eugene , noted American saxophonist and pedagogue; b. Blue Island, Ill., Aug. 23, 1932. He studied clarinet at the Chicago Musical Coll. (B.M.B., 1953), oboe at Northwestern Univ. (M.M., 1954), and saxophone at the Paris Cons. (1960–61), and then completed his academic training at the Univ. of Iowa (Ph.D., 1962, with the diss. Clarinet Instructional Materials from 1732 to circa 1825). In 1965 he made his Carnegie Recital Hall debut in N.Y. He was the first saxophonist to give solo recitals in London, Amsterdam, Vienna, and Berlin (1967) and in Paris (1968), and also appeared as a soloist with orchs. in the U.S., Europe, and the Far East. In 1969 he was co-founder of the World Saxophone Congress. He taught at Luther Coll. in Iowa (1956–59), Central Mo. State Univ. (1962–64), and the Univ. of Iowa (1964); in 1964 he joined the faculty of the Ind. Univ. School of Music, where he was chairman of the woodwind dept. (1966–73), a prof. (1972–88), and Distinguished Prof. (from 1988). He was also a guest prof. at the Vienna Hochschule für Musik (1981–82), Ariz. State Univ. (1984), and the Prague Cons. (1985). He publ. a Method for Saxophone (2 vols., 1973, 1977).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire