Australian Saxophone Quartet: Echo Chamber

Australian Saxophone Quartet: Echo Chamber
The Australian Saxophone Quartet (ASxQ) combines four of Australia’s leading saxophonists.

Creating, reviving, and promoting Australian music both at home and abroad, the musical palette of the group ranges from classical music through to new and experimental music. The group aims to engage artists and musicians from a multicultural Australian community through innovative musical and cultural partnerships.

In 2023, ASxQ recorded their debut album Echo Chamber, featuring works by Australian composers Samantha Wolf, Liza Lim, Mary Finsterer, Cat Hope, and Alice Chance.

The Australian Saxophone Quartet toured Echo Chamber in Bangkok, Sydney, Melbourne, and Ballarat:
Rangsit Univeristy, Bangkok, Thailand, Hanson Dyer Hall, Melbourne, Australia, St Patrick's College, Ballarat, Australia, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Australia

PROGRAM

The Australian Saxophone Quartet presents a program of 21st century music from four distinct voices in Australian new music.

Echo Chamber (2018), Samantha Wolf

saxophone quartet

Described as “haunting”, “enigmatic”, and “inspired”, the music of Australian-born, US-based composer Samantha Wolf blends the classical, contemporary, acoustic, and electroacoustic worlds, while being grounded in the notated tradition.

Ash - music for the Eremozoic (2020), Liza Lim

four saxophones & four spring drums

Liza Lim’s music focusses on collaborative and transcultural practices. Ideas of beauty, ecological connection and ritual transformation are ongoing concerns in her compositional work. In response to the 2019-2020 Australian bushfires ‘Ash’ is a music of lamentation that is about witness; that proceeds by following the natural ‘grain’ or idiosyncracies of the instruments to create something textilic rather than architectural in design. The first part is made up of curling strands like smoke threaded into interlaced patterns ranging from delicate curlicues to thunderous clouds. The second evokes charred remains, roughly drawn marks and grains of fossilised time. The third part offers an image of resilience – wildflowers, tough and delicate cloaked in night colours.

Until (2011), Mary Finsterer

two soprano saxophones

Ionia (2009), Mary Finsterer

saxophone quartet and two percussion 8’

The music of Mary Finsterer is an amalgam of styles that brings together medieval and renaissance musical practice with 20th and 21st century innovations including electronics, orchestration and serial techniques. Her work is infused with historical, metaphorical and poetic references through word–painting and harmonic treatment, with an aim to creating a language that speaks to the universality inherent in the power of music.

Cruel & Unusual (2011), Cat Hope

saxophone quartet & bass amplifiers 9’

Cat Hope is a composer and performer who creates music that is conceptually driven, in animated graphic scores formats for acoustic/electronic combinations and improvisations. Her music is characterised by aleatoric elements, drone, noise and glissandi as well as an ongoing fascination with low frequency sound that threads through all her creative work.

The tour and recording was supported by Creative Australia

G-23-370044 - Arts Projects for Individuals and Groups

Amount Granted: $14,550.00