Metamorphosis
Available now! - Release date September 1, 2023
Metamorphosis is a natural phenomenon when speaking of musicians and their music. Melodies and harmonies are transformed through traditional narrative structures, restless and surreal exploration, or following threads of simple curiosity as compositions shift and re-structure themselves before our very ears. Musicians walk on stage or into a recording studio to shed their cocoons and spread their wings on gusts of sound and vibration, entering the ephemeral flow-space that is performance. We experience the world as endless change, and what better way to hold the awareness of that change than through the medium of music, the artform most closely associated with the passage of time.
This collection of original saxophone quartet works by Canadian composers highlights the fluid creativity of our friends and colleagues. The five pieces on this album are characterized by dense counterpoint, rich harmonies, kaleidoscopic rhythms, delicate timbres, and soul-stirring melodies. There is a rich variety of styles and techniques from the different composers, but the unifying element in all the pieces is a striving after the possibilities of expression from the saxophone quartet. We are grateful for the support of the Canada Council for the Arts in bringing this project to life.
Read the review on The Art Music Lounge
“Aside from the generally fine quality of the music, what impressed me most about Saxophilia is that each member of the group has a GREAT tone, rich and full.”
Read the review on Spectrum Culture
“The Saxophilia Saxophone Quartet is sophisticated and elegant, with a savoir faire for all things musical.”
Read the review on Luminous Dash
“The ideal winter evening or Sunday afternoon music, have a nice drink and enjoy those beautiful brass sounds, and the often very cinematic compositions.”
Read the review on Textura
“The four generate a warm, mellifluous sound that's seamless, refined, and agile, and while the compositions performed on Metamorphosis allow individual players to shine, the primary focus is on group expression, which is both tight and flexible.”
Read the review on AMN Reviews
“The warm, refined tones of all four players are particularly noteworthy.”
Vancouver bandleader, trumpeter, and educator Fred Stride (b. 1953) is recognized as one of Canada’s foremost composers and arrangers for jazz orchestra. Alongside his catalogue of jazz compositions, Fred also regularly writes original through-composed chamber music and orchestral works. He has previously composed a number of chamber works and the Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra for Julia Nolan, and Caverns: for Solo Jazz Tenor Saxophone and Wind Ensemble for David Branter. His work reflects his deep appreciation for the jazz writing of Duke Ellington and Stan Kenton, as well as classical composers such as Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky.
Metamorphosis (2006/2009, rev. 2022) began life as a commission for clarinet quartet, with the title referring to the change of instrumentation for each movement: the original voicing of sopranino, soprano, alto, and bass clarinets gradually metamorphosing into four basses by the last movement. After the piece was arranged for saxophone quartet it lost the instrument changes but kept the inherent musical metamorphoses. Fred made some new revisions in 2022 for this premiere recording.
The first movement “Side by Side” gets off to an energetic start with vigorous rhythms and densely overlapping melodies quickly passing between instruments with a “kaleidoscopic sensibility.” The ambiguously shifting duple/compound triple metre gives a subtle tip of the hat to the lively opening theme from Bernard Hermann’s film soundtrack to North by Northwest. “Tango del Currie” features the soprano saxophone in a sensuous solo, interrupted by unexpected silences and hesitations. “Mystics” is Fred’s take “on Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question.” The lower voices set up a chromatically shifting harmonic texture upon which the soprano saxophone comments “like a wise sage.” The final movement “Down in the Basement” settles into a fast, syncopated groove, full of punchy rhythms and a dazzling finish.
Violet Archer (1913 – 2000) was one of the few prominent Canadian women composers active during the mid to late 20th century. At a time when Canadian classical repertoire was still in its infancy, and when women were not taken very seriously as professional composers, Archer made a name for herself as a respected pianist, organist, educator, and internationally recognized composer. Studies with Béla Bartók and Paul Hindemith helped her to refine her uniquely modernist language, characterized by modal melodies, quartal harmonies, and neo-classical forms. Her Divertimento for saxophone quartet (1979) was composed for the Edmonton Saxophone Quartet shortly after her retirement from teaching at the University of Alberta, and dates from the same period as her Four Bagatelles for piano.
The “Preludio” is typically improvisatory in nature, introducing each of the saxophone voices in short solos before moving through a variety of rhythmic textures and tempi. A slower tempo middle section again features all of the saxophones as solo voices before building up to a reprise of a faster triplet rhythm, and then winding down to a dramatic fortissimo cadence. The second movement “Meditation” is more restless than contemplative, with espressivo melodies characterized by leaps of fourths and fifths, and octatonic passages. The searching melody gets played in turn by all of the saxophone voices with short fragments played in echo “as through a glass darkly,” before coming to rest on another open sonority that fades into the distance. The final “Festive” movement suggests a jig-like folk dance with a lively bounce, interrupted by short fanfares. A briefly contrasting slower section recalls the octatonic melodies of the second movement before returning to the faster jig theme and concluding with wildly accented dissonant chords.
Young Canadian-American composer and violist Beatrice Ferreira mixes a background in playing fiddle music and R&B with research in structured improvisation and experimental music theatre. A composition graduate of McGill University and the Guildhall School of Music, she has worked with Quatuor Bozzini, the Chiara String Quartet, M5 Metales, and Mexican Brass. Her highly expressionistic musical language is full of drama and surprise, exploring the liminal edges of melody and timbre. The Nightmare Fragments (2018) for saxophone quartet sets images recorded from the composer’s dream journal into surreal and evocative miniatures and has recently been scored for a short film with burlesque dancer.
The first movement “three Witches on my bedsheets” is a frenzied and fractured chromatic tarantella, the sounds of restless leg syndrome. “I lay one million purple Eggs” tests the quartet’s skill at interlocking rhythms as it builds up to a frenzied chromatic explosion. The third movement “on the pier: split Rosehip/Cyst” begins with an off-kilter seaside waltz before devolving into walls of multiphonics. “the Taxidermist’s hallway” builds tension and anticipation with permutations of a melodic loop which gradually breaks down into a plaintive soprano saxophone solo, then nervously adds the other instruments back into a scream of sheer terror. Finally, “Red Oak Sap; her Invocation” brings a feeling of peace with soft breath effects in the low saxophones to support the melodic reflections of soprano and alto saxophones.
Vancouver-based composer Rodney Sharman (b. 1958) has been a major figure in Canadian contemporary music whose award-winning music has been performed worldwide. He is comfortable writing in all classical genres including orchestral works, music for dance, operas, choral works, chamber music, and even cabaret songs. His writing is informed by a deep awareness of Romantic and Baroque repertoire while being wholly of the present moment, incorporating a sensitivity to tonal colours and timbral effects that is unmatched.
Homage to Robert Schumann (2022) is Sharman’s first work for saxophone quartet. Described by the composer as “a meditation” on Robert Schumann’s lied “Auf einer Burg,” it takes the first two notes from the song (descending perfect fifth) as an idée fixe that is explored in many guises and transformations. He also employs a favourite timbral effect of using overtone fingerings on the saxophones to create ghostly chords that hang in the air like fragile after-images of sound. Saxophilia commissioned this work from Sharman with an interest in exploring his personal compositional voice, and we can safely say it exceeded our expectations and is unlike anything we have played before. Funding for the commission was generously provided by the British Columbia Arts Council, the SOCAN Foundation, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
David Branter (b. 1952) is a respected educator, conductor, saxophonist, and has turned his hand to composition as well. When not performing with Saxophilia, Branter performs with the Alan Matheson Septet, the Hard Rubber Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and is musical director of the Pacific Symphonic Wind Ensemble. His compositional work has focused on writing for wind band, with pieces such as Cool and Joie de Bop synthesizing his interest in both jazz and classical music.
Four Stories (2022) draws on inspiration from previous Saxophilia repertoire, and puns on the idea of four-ness. A single movement work with four distinct sections, it is influenced by the quartal harmonies (chords of stacked fourths) of Violet Archer, but also includes moments of blues and bebop jazz. Dense minimalist rhythmic textures and microtonal mutations characterize the transitions, while also bringing the piece to a satisfying close.
Debut Recording
The saxophone quartet that became known as Saxophilia came into being in August 1996. The impulse to form the quartet came from Colin MacDonald and Julia Nolan. Both wanted to explore quartet repertoire and perform with a group that had some chance of permanence. David Branter and Tony Sheppard rounded out the group. In 2014, Tony was replaced on alto saxophone by Kris Covlin.
From the beginning the quartet explored little-known repertoire. In the summer of 1996 MacDonald and Nolan had chosen a piece, Stub, by the British composer Graham Fitkin for the group’s first program. Attracted by intense and apparently endless melody as well as energetic minimalist rhythms they had not noticed the extreme rhythmic and stamina demands. So, birthed in the crucible of Stub the quartet worked towards its first series of concerts in the fall of 1996.
From then to the present day Saxophilia has followed a rather eclectic path, performing traditional repertoire, as in a 2007 excursion into classic French pieces, lighter music for different concert contexts such as those sponsored by HealthArts, plus the continued involvement in new music including premiering commissioned works.
This recording represents the best of twenty years of devotion to newly-created Canadian works. It was an intensely prepared labour of love for Saxophilia. We think it contains some of the strongest pieces composed for saxophone quartet in the 21st Century, encompassing widely varying approaches to the capabilities of the saxophone quartet. Explore and enjoy!
Peter Hannan
Peter Hannan has background in traditional orchestral performance (as a French horn player) in early music (as a recorder virtuoso) and new music (in both conventional instrumental/vocal and computer-generated contexts). He has devoted much of his creative career to works for the stage such as his 120 Songs after the Marquis de Sade of 2003
Fast Truck Bop however is written for saxophone quartet in conventional notation unadorned by computer-generated sounds or any other media. It was commissioned in 1998 by the Forty Fingers Saxophone Quartet. The piece’s core genesis was in music Hannan wrote for a 1998 dance project of the Karen Jamieson Dance Company, a series of site-specific performances called The River. For this project Hannan had recorded traffic sounds and translated those for instrumental performance.
Fast Truck Bop demands exceptional rhythmic precision and tone control with many close-spaced canons, mutli-metre and the meditatively effective (but physically hugely demanding) 4th movement.
Derek Charke
Derek Charke is a 2012 Juno award-winning composer for his Reel Variations on a Jig. He has a wide-ranging catalogue that defies categorization. As a professional flute player Charke "hears" wind instruments and this is evident in Last Call. Saxophila premiered this work in 2002. Last Call is a richly harmonized episodic piece that demands nuanced responses from performers regarding phrase and balance. The listener will note a progression from relaxed conversation to intense work out as the piece progresses, ending in an unresolved ‘Why?’ at the end.
Dorothy Chang
Dorothy Chang was awarded the inaugural commission from the Women’s Philharmonic Commissioning Project of “Meet the Composer” in 2008 for which she composed Strange Air. Her works have been performed across North America by symphony orchestras and chamber groups.
Obsess was written for the Chicago saxophone Quartet and premiered by them at the World Saxophone Congress in Minneapolis in 2003. Saxophilia performed it in 2004. In its original form Obsess had three movements. Chang requested that Saxophila record only the first two movements. In this form it is a work of significant contrasts of mood from quiet, introverted reflection to brutal interjections sometimes combining these contrasting moods.
John Burke
John Burke won the Jules Léger Prize for new chamber music in 1995 for his string quartet. He composes frequently for chamber groups.
Saxophilia was delighted to premier Gyaling in 2004. The piece alludes to sounds and practices of ensembles in the Himalayas but has its own interesting rhythmic and textural complexities. Based fundamentally on a D flat major seven structure, Burke weaves many fascinating textures and moods, ending with a depiction of an ensemble of micro-tonal reed instruments approaching the listener. Gyaling is a unique and powerful work.
Colin MacDonald
Colin MacDonald, a founding member of Saxophilia as mentioned above, has composed a number of solo and chamber works for saxophone including the quartet Prana and solo works Thaumaturgy and Flow Like Water. All of these pieces can be heard on the recording Circle of Wind along with the large ensemble piece Prison of Bone. His latest work The Sky is a Clock for 16 saxophones was premiered as an installation on November 24th 2017 as part of Redshift Music’s series Sonologues with the composer having recorded all 16 parts.
MacDonald also plays with and composes for the Cascadia Reed Quintet and his own Pocket Orchestra.
The Triple Saxophone Quartet was written in 2012 for Saxophilia. Usually performed with one live quartet and two pre-recorded groups, it was performed live by three saxophone quartets in February 2017 at a saxophone conference in Edmonton, Alberta. The piece features recurring, overlapping and intertwining rhythms common to MacDonald’s compositions.