Steven J. Hutchison

1987 -

Steven Hutchison, a saxophonist, singer, and composer, teaches music at Midland Adventist Academy (MAA) in Kansas, a position he has held since 2012. He is a December 2011 cum laude graduate of Union College with a B.Mus. in music education, instrumental emphasis, and a B.A. in Spanish.

Steven was born in Farmington, Missouri, the older of two children and only son of Steve and Judy Gremminger Hutchison. He was raised in a home where music was an important activity, his mother being an amateur singer and former saxophone player. Although he was home-schooled, he was able to start saxophone lessons in the eighth grade at a local Lutheran school where he played in a beginner's band.

He entered Sunnydale Adventist Academy in Missouri at the beginning of his junior year and by his senior year, encouraged by band director Cathi Wilson, he became first chair of the saxophone section. He also began to compose and arrange music for small groups, which he shared with Rudy Dennis during a band festival at Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska. Dennis was impressed and encouraged Steven, a reaction that not only inspired him to continue writing but led to his enrolling at the college after graduating from SAA in 2006.

He began college intending to pursue a civil engineering major but by the end of his first semester changed his major to music. In his second year, he studied abroad at the Seventh-day Adventist College in Sagunto, Spain, where he completed most of the requirements for a Spanish major, sang in the select a cappella choir, and taught conversational English for five months.

Steven distinguished himself at UC, where he continued to arrange and compose a number of works for various groups, one of which won a prize locally; was first chair saxophone in the college band; led a saxophone quartet, and received the John Phillip Sousa Award in 2011. He also organized and prepared digital catalogues of music department holdings and assisted in the music program. In 2011 he helped teach in the Lincoln summer "Edventure" program as an Americorps Vista Volunteer. He completed an M.Mus. Ed. at the University of Kansas while teaching at MAA.

ds/2020

Source: Information provided by Steven Hutchison, in January, May, and July 2012; Biography at Midland Adventist Academy (2019); Tiffany Doss, "Steven Hutchison," Union College Cordmagazine, Summer 2011, 23; personal knowledge.