Bizarro for Saxophone Quartet

Hi all,

Evan here with my piece of the summer. I got to attend the Imani Winds festival in NYC (at Juilliard!!!) last week. Was amazing and awesome. I had to write a piece for it and got to write for the one odd group out - the sax quartet. I wanted to write something that matched the energy of getting a premiere at Juilliard, something that would be great for the 2nd group premiering it (my amazing friends at Memphis), and I also wanted to push my style the furthest I could. 

All of my music for awhile now has been some variation of the style I built from my minimalist orchestral work, but it was time I forced myself to try something different. For this work, I tried really hard to do the opposite of every normal decision I would normally make when writing. This was extremely hard to write and I did not have a direction until the last week of writing. Eventually, this piece fell into the idea of just being weird. It was bizarre! I did not even like listening to it at the time. But, as I leaned into writing weird, it really became something I was proud of.

I listened to every single saxophone quartet I could find on the internet to influence this work. I wanted to create something worthy of the repertoire, and while I am not able to say if it is or not, I gave it my all. I certainly think it is a unique piece, and I hope you enjoy some of the musical soundscapes I wrote down. Thank you for listening.

Wow, congratulations for this work.
I think it's a great piece with mastery of extended techniques and all that, but all the instruments are very well cohesive.
The live performance is superb.
I enjoy more some of the less lively movements (like 2. Nosferatu).

Greetings.

Hi @Eickso,

For sure this one is a bizzare but lovely piece! I enjoy the energy that always appear in your energy with your minimalistic and rhythmic approach to music, plus the use of extended techniques. Even though you aim to be weird in this one, your influence and style still appear apparently for me! I'll just go briefly on some interesting things of this work.

For the first movement, I like the baby crying sound effect at the beginning, and I like how rhythmic this movement is.

For the second mov I love your contrast here with moods and dynamics changing frequently and quickly. It's weird in another way with the speech never finishes properly. I like in b.25 your decaying effect and the lovely trills.

The third movement really sounds like an organized mess at the beginning! I love the slides here more than that of the first movement, maybe it's less urgent here. I like the section begins in b.19 with those whirling figures, really a mess here! This is my favourite movement of the entire work.

For the fourth movement the opening is funny like the ambulance sirens. Again your minimalistic method shines here with all those repeated notes and phrases.

Thx for sharing! A lovely performance for sure! Is the right most guy you playing?

Henry

21 hours ago, Luis Hernández said:

Wow, congratulations for this work.
I think it's a great piece with mastery of extended techniques and all that, but all the instruments are very well cohesive.
The live performance is superb.
I enjoy more some of the less lively movements (like 2. Nosferatu).

Greetings.

 

Thank you so much for all of the kind words, Luis!! It really means a lot. Movements 2+4 are my favorites for sure. I am going to wait for the second performance before deciding which one to post publicly, but I definitely loved this premiere. Just cannot decide if it is the one I want to represent the piece quite yet, as there is still a lot of room for dynamics throughout. 

Let me know if you have any music you would like me to listen to and provide a comment on!

44 minutes ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

Hi @Eickso,

For sure this one is a bizzare but lovely piece! I enjoy the energy that always appear in your energy with your minimalistic and rhythmic approach to music, plus the use of extended techniques. Even though you aim to be weird in this one, your influence and style still appear apparently for me! I'll just go briefly on some interesting things of this work.

For the first movement, I like the baby crying sound effect at the beginning, and I like how rhythmic this movement is.

For the second mov I love your contrast here with moods and dynamics changing frequently and quickly. It's weird in another way with the speech never finishes properly. I like in b.25 your decaying effect and the lovely trills.

The third movement really sounds like an organized mess at the beginning! I love the slides here more than that of the first movement, maybe it's less urgent here. I like the section begins in b.19 with those whirling figures, really a mess here! This is my favourite movement of the entire work.

For the fourth movement the opening is funny like the ambulance sirens. Again your minimalistic method shines here with all those repeated notes and phrases.

Thx for sharing! A lovely performance for sure! Is the right most guy you playing?

Henry

 

 

Hi Henry,

Deeply appreciate your listen and in depth comment. I am surprised you still hear a lot of me in this! But, of course you do - this is still my musical message. The minimalism was something I tried to do away with for a majority of the piece, though. I only brought it back for the last movement because I found a way to still challenge my normal way of writing with all of the microtones / bizarre outbursts throughout. This is, in my opinion, my most mature work so far? I think, outside of the 1st movement (which may be revised to match the quality of the other 3), I really took time to try and not cut corners with this piece. 

The neck only saxophones in the opening turned out a LOT better than I thought. Genuinely had no idea how it would sound, but it fit. Especially that gnarly soprano growl closing the movement.

What were your thoughts on the vocal / aleatoric sections? This was maybe the first time I implemented something I wrote on paper into my music and was kind of a disconnected idea that I wrote down for score beauty + the idea of creating an ethereal sound moreso.

My teacher and I fought about the 3rd movement for awhile! I almost made it all aleatoric again saying "just go nuts," but my teacher convinced me to write it all out. I was really struggling to write out rhythms and notes that were as crazy sounding as I wanted. I used a joke piece, "The World's Most Unwanted Music," to steal the idea of a "slam" (everyone playing crazy and all at once) at first, but my teacher said to just write something out. I opted for what is in the score, and it really did turn out like the chaos I wanted!!!

I kept telling the performers the 4th movement's opening reminded me of Hereditary. Something about it is sad / reminiscent. This is my favorite movement for its emotional factor. I think it could have the same effect on a listener if something the dynamic direction was played with more confidence, which I hope to have in the second performance. I loved it here, but I think the 4th movement suffered the most because there are really important big moments that were just never played with confidence.

I was not playing, no. His name is Ron. We hung out a lot and he is like a frat boy who decided to become a musician. Funny energy. 

I appreciate your support of my music and pursuits. Thanks for your emails and comments 🙂

2 hours ago, Eickso said:

Deeply appreciate your listen and in depth comment. I am surprised you still hear a lot of me in this! But, of course you do - this is still my musical message. The minimalism was something I tried to do away with for a majority of the piece, though. I only brought it back for the last movement because I found a way to still challenge my normal way of writing with all of the microtones / bizarre outbursts throughout. This is, in my opinion, my most mature work so far? I think, outside of the 1st movement (which may be revised to match the quality of the other 3), I really took time to try and not cut corners with this piece. 

For your pieces I have heard, at least I also like the Toy Box Suite, Skipping Stones at the Pond, Where Light Doesn't Shine and Desert Tales. At least within the piece you're taking your progress with the 1st movement adapting to the ensemble and saxophone quartet setting, with more colours in later movements.

2 hours ago, Eickso said:

What were your thoughts on the vocal / aleatoric sections? This was maybe the first time I implemented something I wrote on paper into my music and was kind of a disconnected idea that I wrote down for score beauty + the idea of creating an ethereal sound moreso.

I appreciate the vocal sections since they are all things I don't do in my music. I like the organized aleatoric sections more since they are what you are doing in your past works.

2 hours ago, Eickso said:

My teacher and I fought about the 3rd movement for awhile! I almost made it all aleatoric again saying "just go nuts," but my teacher convinced me to write it all out. I was really struggling to write out rhythms and notes that were as crazy sounding as I wanted. I used a joke piece, "The World's Most Unwanted Music," to steal the idea of a "slam" (everyone playing crazy and all at once) at first, but my teacher said to just write something out. I opted for what is in the score, and it really did turn out like the chaos I wanted!!!

Yup sometimes organized aleatory is even more choatic than just random aleatory, just like human beings who aim to do good to others which result in greater harm than a pure evil guy.

2 hours ago, Eickso said:

I was not playing, no. His name is Ron. We hung out a lot and he is like a frat boy who decided to become a musician. Funny energy. 

Yeah I think you play clarinet really well and think you may also good at another single reed instrument! And far from the stage the appearance btw you and Ron is quite alike haha!!

Henry