Saxophone Quartet

When I share with anyone that I'm a composer, one of the first questions they ask is: what kind of music do you make? I'll usually respond by explaining how chamber music works.

"I write solo's, duets, and other small ensemble instrumental music often incorporating computer music in some capacity."

That response alone usually shuts down the question because it often satiates their curiosity, but is also too far outside their experience to really follow up with any other meaningful questions. What I don't share is that, so far in my 16 years of being some semblance of a professional composer, I have somehow avoided writing for any standard or typical ensemble like band, orchestra, or saxophone and string quartet. Most of us composers can be forgiven for not writing larger ensemble works; their scope and scale are usually too ambitious, especially for those of us that only moonlight as composers. But the quartet? String Quartet? Saxophone Quartet? Those should be easy.

You know what's even more absurd? I'm a trained saxophonist - if there is anyone who would easily write a saxophone quartet it should be the composer-saxophonist! But I waited. Ten years ago, I tried to write my first saxophone quartet. It was a feeble attempt. I was experienced, taught well through my Bachelor's program at Murray State. I had just returned from my first international music composition festival - the HighSCORE Festival in Pavia, Italy. But what I brought back was little more than an imitation of the quartets that had inspired and intimidated me. I don't count that first saxophone quartet among my serious work, both for its incompleteness and its borrowed ideas. To understand why it took me so long to write a String Quartet or Saxophone Quartet in earnest, you have to understand the deep admiration I developed for the genre - and that story begins in August 2014, in Pavia.