Metamorphosis
Saxophilia Saxophone Quartet
Redshift Records TK526 (redshiftrecords.org)
Saxophilia is a Vancouver-based saxophone quartet active since 1996. Metamorphosis is their second album which showcases a diverse selection of works from five Canadian composers. The title piece Metamorphosis (Fred Stride) contains four movements which demonstrate the quartet’s ability to play exciting and complex lines with great clarity and intensity. Violet Archer’s Divertimento, originally written for the Edmonton Saxophone Quartet in 1979, displays the influences of her studies with Bartók and Hindemith. The sonorities are modernist and bracing. Beatrice Ferreira’s five-movement Nightmare Fragments offers quick and delightful trips to the world of dreams. With descriptive titles like Three Witches on My Bedsheets and The Taxidermist’s Hallway, it is not surprising this piece has recently been used as a score for a short film with a burlesque dancer.
Rodney Sharman’s Homage to Robert Schumann is a meditative piece with long tones and ghosted chord fingerings which uses the first two notes of a Schumann song as an ideé fixe. This piece is an elegant departure from most saxophone quartet works which highlight the players’ dexterity. Finally, David Branter (who plays tenor saxophone in the quartet) wrote Four Stories which conjures up the history of saxophone quartet music and includes quartal harmonies, blues, bebop and microtonal sections.
