Songbook for saxophone quartet (2019)
Songbook is a saxophone quartet with an interesting history.
In 2018, I submitted the first movement of this piece to the Donald Sinta Quartet’s annual call for scores as a stand-alone movement titled Hurricane. They selected it, along with seven other works, to program on their concert that year.
The following summer, I approached them with Songbook: a twenty-five minute, multi-movement behemoth of a project. And while I didn’t qualify for their annual contest since I was no longer a student, they were happy to perform it after reviewing the score.
Songbook is, as the title states, quite literally a book of songs and chorales, but ones that are undeniably for saxophone. The piece calls for a handful of modern saxophone techniques: multiphonics, slap-tongues, altissimo, etc, but fits them into a simple, more song-like soundscape. Over time, the songs and chorales begin to bend and blend, amalgamating a world of saxophone history from Glazunov to Maslanka, from Bozza to Albright and Battle Trance.
In my eyes, Songbook highlights the marriage of a few distinct roles the saxophone plays that rarely—but really ought to—meet.