Short Stories: American Music for Saxophone Quartet

Description

Product Description Taking it's name from Jennifer Higdon' Short Stories, this album explores stylistically diverse music showcasing the saxophone quartet' immense expressive potential. Review The Ancia Saxophone Quartet consists of four college professors who live and work in the upper Midwest: Matthew Sintchak (soprano), professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater; Joan Hutton (alto), professor at Augsburg College in Minneapolis; David Milne (tenor), professor at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls; and Angela Wyatt (baritone), professor at the University of Minnesota. The group boasts an impressive list of concerts, composer collaborations, premieres, and partnerships; and their personnel can be very flexible--Sintchak and Wyatt play tenor saxophone on a few tracks; St Olaf College professor Kurt Claussen joins the group on soprano saxophone for half the recital; and Minneapolis-based accordion player Dee Langley is a guest in Carleton Macy's Elusive Dreams. This release, part of Naxos's "American Classics" series, is a showcase of contemporary American composers, with two classic pieces as bookends. The concert begins with an arrangement of the Chorale from Charles Ives's Quartet No. 1 From the Salvation Army (1896); followed by Jennifer Higdon's Short Stories (1996), a multi-movement work with descriptive titles; Fred Sturm's Picasso Cubed (2003); Michael Torke's July (1995); David Bixler's seven-movement Heptagon (2006); Macy's Elusive Dreams (1995); and finally, an arrangement of Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton's `Black Bottom Stomp' (1926). For quartets interested in finding these works, the liner notes give the publishers. In this day and age, groups have to demonstrate that they are at home in a range of repertoire and styles, and in this recital the Ancia Quartet does just that. They indulge in the thick European-style romanticism of Ives, but allow the more transparent American romanticism of Higdon and the colorful minimalist landscape of Torke to shimmer. At the same time, they aggressively spit out the angular melodies, virtuosic licks, and dissonant polyphony in Higdon's fast movements; and they easily shift between the abstract tonality and the pop rhythms in the Bixler and the Macy. Sturm's cool jazz and improvisatory feel and Morton's Dixieland-style dance tune both give the ensemble the chance to "let their hair down" and have some fun; and indeed, the listener will find it hard not to start tapping his toes. This is well done; the casual listener will enjoy it just as much as the curious composer or the record-collecting saxophonist. -- American Record Guide, Patrick Hanudel, November/December 2009