George Wolfe
Professor Emeritus of Music Performance
Saxophonist George Wolfe is Professor Emeritus at Ball State University where he taught saxophone performance and chamber music for 32 years. He has performed extensively throughout the United States and has also concertized in Europe, Cyprus, Costa Rica, Canada, India, Korea, and Japan. He has been heard on radio stations across the US and has appeared as a soloist with such ensembles as the Royal Band of the Belgian Air force, the United States Navy Band, the Saskatoon Symphony, the World Band at Disney World, the Chautauqua Motet Choir, the Indianapolis Children’s Choir, and the Medalist Concert Band in Minneapolis. Critics have praised his playing as "brilliant and moving." John Lambert, writing in the Winston Salem Spectator, described Wolfe’s performance as “a deeply satisfying and moving artistic experience.” His most recent compact disks, Le Saxophone Mélodieux and Le Saxophone Extraordinaire, feature saxophone chamber music and solos with piano, choir and wind ensemble.
Dr. Wolfe holds a Performance Certificate from Indiana University where he studied with Eugene Rousseau and Daniel Deffayet. He was featured on eight volumes of the compact disk series America’s Millennium Tribute to Adolphe Sax, distributed by Arizona University Recordings. He has presented master classes at the Paris Conservatory, Indiana University, and the Interlochen Center for the Arts, and he has taught as an artist-in-residence at Arizona State University, Klagenfurt Conservatory (Austria), the University of Saskatchewan (Canada), and at the University of San Jose in Costa Rica. From 2000 to 2013, several of his students performed with him on his summer recitals at Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York. He was also the recipient of an open fellowship award from the Eli Lilly Endowment to study Hindustani music in New Delhi, India and at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California. In 1997, Ball State University awarded Wolfe its Outstanding Creative Endeavor award for his CD entitled Lifting the Veil.
Dr. Wolfe also served as director of the Ball State Center for Peace and Conflict Studies from 2002 to 2006. Arun Gandhi and peace educator Michael N. Nagler have endorsed his book entitled The Spiritual Power of Nonviolence: Interfaith Understanding for a Future without War. His second book, Meditations of Mystery: Science, Paradox and Contemplative Spirituality, was published in 2014 by Dignity Press.