Allen Shawn

Saxophone Quartet

Composer's Note:

Composing "Saxophones Are In My DNA" helped me get through a difficult period in my health at the end of 2024. The challenge of writing for four saxophones in an idiom that evoked jazz heard in childhood, while also reconciling it with my recent idiom, was deeply comforting. One might hear echoes of both Thelonious Monk and Berg in the first movement, "Nostalgia". I don't subscribe to any particular religion, but I intended the second movement, "Prayer" (which is almost entirely 12-tone) in all seriousness. "The Future" attempts to look forward, yet some of its buoyant passages sound exactly like the music I wrote as a teenager. My Uncle Mike played the saxophone, and hearing him improvise a few times during my childhood, alongside my father at the piano, taught me a lot about the fleeting joy music could bring to two rather depressive men simply by their deciding to play together. Writing this piece also gave me joy.