Almost as soon as saxophonist-composer Nick Zoulek (BGSU MM ’15; DMA ’19) released his first solo album, Rushing Past Willow (Innova Records), in 2016 while completing his doctoral degree, he began working on his second. Zoulek felt a need to continue developing the idiomatic compositional vocabulary that he had begun exploring in Rushing Past Willow.

This vocabulary includes experimental microphone arrangements and a seemingly inexhaustible variety of extended playing techniques. “I’m working on turning the saxophone into a whole sound world of its own,” Zoulek says. “At the same time, I’m trying to figure out—what is the classical saxophone?”

Rather than answer that question alone, Zoulek assembled a diverse ensemble of musical collaborators: Sean Carey (Bon Iver), Nathalie Joachim (Eighth Blackbird, Flutronix), spoken word artist J. Ivy, guitar/pedal steel master J. Tom Hnatow, mixing engineer Brian F. Joseph, ~nois saxophone quartet, Tontine Ensemble, and others. With the release of Enter Branch (Better Company Records) on August 7, audiences are invited into the new sound worlds Zoulek and his collaborators have created over the better part of a decade.

Zoulek spent three years composing the album before moving into recording and production. A successful Kickstart campaign in 2019 raised over $20,000 from nearly 200 different backers. Then the COVID-19 pandemic upended the music industry, and Zoulek used the extra time to find the right label. “Classical labels said the music wasn’t classical enough. Indie/rock labels said it was too classical,” Zoulek wrote recently to his project backers. “Sometimes the process of submitting and waiting approval took months. But I’ll admit…I’m grateful for that extra time. It gave me an opportunity to grow; to live with the music and learn from it.”

“Working on the album,” Zoulek noted, “almost felt like a diary at times, and I’ve realized that a whole artistic practice developed from the process.”

Like Rushing Past Willow, Enter Branch is both an album and a corresponding multimedia project. As an accomplished filmmaker, photographer, and audio engineer, Zoulek conceives of his projects holistically; during his time as a DMA student at BGSU, his interests in these fields led him to pursue studies in video art and media theory alongside his saxophone lessons with Dr. John Sampen. (For the past few years, Zoulek has taught the Music and Digital Media seminar for current DMA students at BGSU.) But where the first album highlighted interdisciplinary collaborations with installation artists, dancers, and filmmakers, the collaborations in Enter Branch are more fundamentally musical.

“Everyone on the album inspires me not just musically but in how they interact with their musical communities,” Zoulek says. “That’s the best foundation you could ask for. You feel when there’s a certain foundational connection, and the collaborations just grow from that.”

The DMA in Contemporary Music program has graduated more than 50 students since its first class entered in fall 2006. Its growing network of DMA alumni remain active in contemporary music scenes around the world and boasts a discography of more than 40 albums. Many doctoral students take advantage of the College of Musical Arts’ state-of-the-art performance and recording facilities to embark on albums and other major creative projects during their studies.