Saxophone Brilliance

PRISM Quartet’s new touring program, Saxophone Brilliance, features a cross-section of traditional and new music that captures the saxophone’s capacity for soaring lyricism, blinding speed, and its enormous range of color and sound. The program includes Schumann Bouquet, selections from Robert Schumann’s Album for the Young, adapted as a gift for PRISM Quartet by the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer William Bolcom; two charming Colombian folk songs by Jose Alejandro Morales and Roberto Saghini; and a reimagining of Stephen Sondheim’s Send in the Clowns by PRISM’s own Matthew Levy, endorsed by Sondheim himself, who raved, “I love it!” Contemporary works include Pulitzer Prize-winner Julia Wolfe‘s Cha, composed for PRISM in memory of her father, with whom she often danced the cha cha in her youth. (“He would hit the dance floor and take me along with him.”); Bill Ryan‘s Tiny Machines, a collection of 10 beautifully constructed miniatures, each portraying a distinct station along a robotic assembly line at a Ford truck factory in Dearborn, Michigan; and Julius Eastman‘s Joy Boy, which “operates on Eastman’s principle of organic composition, with layer after layer being added as a shimmering totality slowly morphs and emerges. Aside from being a structural technique for his compositions, Eastman’s vertically additive approach expresses a deeper, profoundly emotional, desire toward wholeness—to embrace his entire being and embodied experience as a gay Black man in the mid-20th century” according to Miki Cloud and Kathryn Bacasmot.

PROGRAM

Schumann Bouquet by Robert Schumann (1810-1856), arr. 2015 by William Bolcom (b. 1938)+
I. Lieber Mai (The beautiful month of May)
II. Knecht Ruprecht (The bogeyman)
III. Sheherazade
IV. Ländler (a sort of German waltz)
V. Sehr langsam (Very slow)
VI. Lied italienischer Marinari (Song of the Italian boatmen)

Cha (2015) by Julia Wolfe (b. 1958)+

Pueblito Viejo by Jose Alejandro Morales (1913-1978), arr. by Alvaro Rojas
Paqueta by Roberto Saghini (1911-1961)

Send in the Clowns (1973, from A Little Night Music) Stephen Sondheim (b. 1930) arr. 2019 by Matthew Levy (b. 1963)+

Joy Boy (1974), by Julius Eastman (1940-1990), arr. 2023 by Masso Quartet

Tiny Machines (2017/2024) by Bill Ryan
1. Cog
2. Gear
3. Bearing
4. Torque
5. Pulley
6. Lever
7. RPM
8. Spindle
9. Belt
10. Turbine

+ denotes commissioned by and/or composed/arranged for the PRISM Quartet