Apple Valley jazz prodigy will tour Asia with national youth orchestra

When it came time for Sophia Kickhofel to pick a musical instrument when she was in the fifth grade, she chose the trumpet.

" 'Too spitty,' " Kickhofel recalled her mother saying, alluding to the off-putting drain valve that requires constant attention. "Mom told me I had to play the sax."

It was not love at first wail with the alto saxophone. But then Kickhofel was introduced to jazz.

Now, the 16-year-old sophomore at Apple Valley High School ranks among the nation's most accomplished student alto sax jazz players in the country, having won one of two spots for her instrument on this summer's 22-member National Youth Orchestra (NYO) Jazz roster.

The fully financed honor means a four-week schedule that starts in mid-July in New York City and includes a two-week residency and a performance on the Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at the famed Carnegie Hall, with Grammy winner Kurt Elling as a special guest artist. Elling sang in the choir and with the jazz orchestra while attending Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn., in the late 1980s.

After that comes a concert tour in the Far East with stops in Taipei, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and the capital city of Seoul in her mother's native South Korea.

"I'm really excited to see where she's from," Kickhofel said.

Nearly 200 musicians ages 16-19 applied for a spot in the jazz orchestra, with each evaluated by leading professionals in jazz, Carnegie Hall staff and NYO Jazz artistic director and acclaimed trumpeter Sean Jones.

"We are looking for players who are highly accomplished and will bring a distinctive musical personality to the ensemble," said Douglas Beck, Carnegie Hall's director of artist training programs, "while also prioritizing students for whom the experience will be especially powerful and transformative."

Speaking of Kickhofel, Beck said, "Sophia has avidly pursued all of the local opportunities available to her, and we feel that NYO Jazz can help her advance even further as a talented young woman in jazz."

David Scalise, Kickhofel's high school music teacher, calls his pupil "the most talented musician I have ever worked with."

What sets Kickhofel apart from her musical peers, Scalise added, is that "she actually listens on her free time. She is one of the most mature listeners I've ever worked with. She listens to all these artists and is absorbing their styles."

In particular, Scalise said, Kickhofel "has a knack for improvisation and instantly composes her melodies. She has done a lot of playing by ear."

Kickhofel gave some insight into her favorite aspect of jazz.

"Improvisation is the most fun part because it's how you can connect with other people without really having to talk to each other," she said.

Kickhofel went right to the top of the musical heap in high school as a freshman prodigy, auditioning and landing spots in both of the school's top jazz ensembles. She's also in marching band and plays in school R&B and wind ensembles.

Outside of school, Kickhofel has played as the lone alto sax in a combo with the Twin Cities-wide Dakota Foundation for Jazz Education. Coming up is a return to one of the stages for the Twin Cities Jazz Festival, held largely in St. Paul's Lowertown area June 20-22.

And she's been known to play at Jazz Central Studios in southeast Minneapolis.

"It's a basement kind of thing, where me and my friends go and mess around," she said.

Kickhofel said she won't miss the chance while in Manhattan to dip into the Lincoln Center's intimate Dizzy's Club, hoping for a chance that she'll be waved on stage for an informal jam. She heard that very thing happened last summer to an NYO Jazz member.

Just in case, Kickhofel said, she'll have her cherished 1970s Selmer Mark VI saxophone along.

"It's my go-to horn," she said of the instrument, which runs several thousand dollars, new or used. "It took me two years to save up for it."