tenor saxophone

Where Sound and Thought Meet is a compact work which uses contemporary materials in a rigorous traditional form. The materials are all derived from overtone relations built from a low Db, the concert pitch underpinning all four saxophones (underscored by the puns built into the titles of the two movements). The form is prelude and fugue. The interplay between these elements gives the work is dynamism. The internal chemistry of pure sound meets the abstract architecture of the form. And of course, that’s a lot of what music is about, isn’t it?

Program notes link

New Hudson Sax Quartet on Ravello RR7805 Excerpt

Bust a Flame, composed for Flexible Music, was written during February of 2009. It’s dedicated, with love, to my son, Isaac. I want to express my gratitude to Flexible Music for their musicality, virtuosity, and commitment.

 I found my way into the language of the piece gradually, a language conditioned by Flexible Music's unusual instrumentation of tenor saxophone, guitar, piano and percussion. This instrumentation, suggestive of a jazz group, steered me further in a direction that I'd already been pursuing: incorporating some of the vitality and spontaneity of the music that I first played as a saxophonist (and love to this day) into the music I've been composing. I knew early on that I wanted to take advantage of Dan Lippel's considerable skill and experience as an electric guitarist and that I wanted to use a drum set, instead of the percussion instruments that I'd written for in the past. The 'drumsetness' of the percussion part comes into prominence little by little until it emerges completely fairly late in the piece.