MUSIC FOR FOUR BARITONE SAXOPHONES

NEW YORK CITY
Friday, April 25, 2008 @ 7:30 p.m
Symphony Space Leonard Nimoy Thalia
95th Street and Broadway
Tickets: $21
Members, Students, Seniors $16
Box Office: (212) 864-5400
website

PHILADELPHIA
Saturday, April 26, 2008 @ 7:30pm
ICE BOX Project Space
1400 N. American Street, Philadelphia
Tickets: $35 for ages 18-30 and artists; $75 per individual; $125 per couple
Benefit for Mazzoni Center
Box office: 215-563-0663
website

The PRISM Quartet sheds its standard instrumentation in its final concert of the season: LOW BLOW, a ground-shaking evening of music for four baritone saxophones. Daring works by Martin Bresnick, Michael Gordon, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Olga Neuwirth join rumbling world premieres by Roshanne Etezady and PRISM’s own Matthew Levy.

The New York concert will take place at Symphony Space, 95th Street and Broadway, on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 7:30 p.m. For tickets, visit www.symphonyspace.org or call (212) 864-5400.

On Saturday, April 26th, at 7:30 p.m., the PRISM Quartet presents LOW BLOW in Philadelphia as part of HEARTWORKS, a weeklong benefit for Mazzoni Center, Pennsylvania’s first and oldest HIV/AIDS service organization. This gala event will take place at ICE BOX Project Space at 1400 N. American Street in Philadelphia. Tickets range from $35 to $125. Tickets to LOW BLOW also include admission to the art exhibition and auction, butlered hors d’oeuvres and open bar. To purchase, visit www.inliquid.com/heartworks or call 215-563-0663.

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

LOW BLOW begins with The Low Quartet (1985) byMichael Gordon. He describes the work as “a celebration of the rich, low, reedy register” of bass instruments. “I thought it was time to give them some action,” he adds, “a clumsy, fast-moving, hard-driving dance, like fat cows grooving.” Gordon’s music combines the intensity and power of rock music and formal composition training. Recent commissions have come from the Kronos Quartet, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ensemble Modern Orchestra, the BBC Proms, The Seimens Kulturprogram, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, among others.

Premiering on this program, Matthew Levy’s Been There (2008) is scored for tenor and three baritone saxophones and draws from the composer’s soundtrack to Constance Dry’s documentary of the same name. Been There’s opening movement is highly improvisatory, intermingling elements of jazz and pop music with serialized melodic material. The second movement, a tenor ballad, is a nod to Erik Satie, the early 20th century French composer whose work was a precursor to minimalism. Levy co-founded the PRISM Quartet in 1984 and is a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellow in jazz composition. His music has been described as “gorgeous and ethereal” by Classical magazine and “pulsing and wittily colored” by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Roshanne Etezady’s Slow and Low (2008) also receives its world premiere. Taking its title from a Beastie Boys song, the work features very low, active, figures contrasted against slow, lengthy phrases in the extreme upper register of the baritone sax. The Detroit Free Press has hailed Etezady as “a promising and confident composer,” and she has received commissions from the Albany Symphony, Dartmouth Symphony, eighth blackbird, and MATA, among others. She is a founding member of the Minimum Security Composers Collective and teaches nationally.

Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth contributes Spleen III (1994/2003), in a version for solo baritone saxophone. The piece combines intense lyricism with virtuosity that borders on the absurd. Extended techniques – including clicking keys, singing, and barking into the instrument – couple with runs and glides, placing “nearly inhuman” demands on the soloist. Neuwirth describes her style with references to the “frayed and overexposed” edges of early photographs, the “twisted enlargements” of film, and authors from Goethe and Baudelaire to Gertrude Stein and Elfriede Jelinek. The Salzburg Festival dedicated two concerts to her music in 1998, and she is currently In-House Composer at the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Flanders.

Martin Bresnick’s Tent of Miracles (1984), for solo baritone sax and three baritone saxophones, shares the title of a novel by Brazilian author Jorge Amado. To accompany his work, Bresnick offers a quotation from the book, which includes the lines, “But he couldn’t help it: the fiercer he made the jaguar, the broader the animal’s smile; between the wild beast and the child there was a secret pact, an old familiarity, an immemorial friendship.” A Professor of Composition at the Yale School of Music and a student of György Ligeti, Bresnick was elected to membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2006 and honored with a concert of his music at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall in 2007.

The final piece on the program, Sofia Gubaidulina’s Duo Sonata for two baritone saxophones (1977/1995) uses microtones, multiphonics, glissandi, and references to Orthodox chant to conjure fascinating timbres and harmonies. Raised in the Soviet Union, Gubaidulina constantly resisted the expectation that composition should glorify the communist regime. She worked in virtual obscurity until 1985, when she was first allowed to travel west, and has since won numerous awards and commissions. Her recent awards include the Great Distinguished Service Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2002) and the Living Composer Prize of the Cannes Classical Awards in 2003.

ABOUT HEARTWORKS
Opening on April 18, 2008, HEARTWORKS will feature contemporary music, video art, performance art, film and an exhibition of approximately 100 artworks by artists from Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, London and Paris. The HEARTWORKS Gala and Art Auction on Saturday, April 26 from 6-10pm will include both a silent auction and a live auction hosted by Antique Roadshow’s Alasdair Nichol. In addition to LOW BLOW at 7:30pm, DJ Chad Brown will provide music. Attendees will enjoy hors d’oeuvres, open bars, and martini bars. Patron packages, which include limited prints by Alex Da Corte, Jack Pierson or Michele O’ Marah and tickets to all HEARTWORKS events are $500 and $1,000.

ABOUT THE PRISM QUARTET
Champions of modern chamber music, the PRISM Quartet has premiered over 100 works in settings ranging from featured performances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center to concerto appearances with the Detroit Symphony and Cleveland Orchestras. PRISM has been a winner of commissioning grants from Chamber Music America, The Presser Foundation, the Rockefeller Multi-Arts Production Fund, the NEA, and Meet the Composer, and has twice been the recipient of the CMA/ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award. The Quartet has recorded for Koch and Innova and may also be heard on the soundtrack of the film Two Plus One, the feature film debut of writer/director and Emmy nominee Eugene Martin, scored by Matthew Levy and broadcasted on Showtime’s Sundance Channel. PRISM is also featured in the theme music of Now, a weekly television news magazine on PBS. Please visit www.prismquartet.com.

PROGRAM
The Low Quartet (1985) - Michael Gordon
for four baritone saxophones

Been There (2008) - Matthew Levy (World Premiere)
for tenor and three baritone saxophones

Slow and Low (2008)- Roshanne Etezady (World Premiere)
for four baritone saxophones

Spleen III (1994/2001) - Olga Neuwirth
for solo baritone saxophone

Tent of Miracles (1984) - Martin Bresnick
for solo baritone saxophone and three baritone saxophones

Duo Sonata (1977/1994) - Sofia Gubaidulina
for two baritone saxophones

For more information on the PRISM Quartet, please visit www.prismquartet.com.

PRISM Quartet
Timothy McAllister, baritone saxophone
Zachary Shemon, baritone saxophone
Matthew Levy, baritone & tenor saxophones
Taimur Sullivan, baritone saxophone