Concordia Santa Fe
"Harmony in the High Desert"
a 501(c)(3) charitable organization
News
Changing Attitudes:
Saxophones in
Concert
(Santa Fe, NM). The sound and image of the saxophone has become iconic within American music, particularly in the jazz idiom. The saxophone’s inventor and namesake, Adolphe Sax, would be quite pleased by the high regard in which we now hold his creation. However, its reception by the Romantic-era formal musical society into which it was born was, to say the least, lukewarm.
The upcoming presentation of Changing Attitudes will musically document the saxophone’s progression from the misfit of the orchestra to one of the most versatile and loved instrumental families of modern music. While primarily based on a quartet format, this varied chamber performance will bring the listener on a journey through history, from the emergence of saxophone quartet repertoire to multi-family contemporary chamber compositions.
Changing Attitudes is the first offering of 2010 from Concordia Santa Fe’s chamber music series. Repertoire for the chamber performance ranges from Allegro de Concert by J. B. Singelee, the first saxophone quartet written in 1854, to Quartet for Flute, Alto Saxophone, Bassoon, and Cello by Joe Woolfe, written in 1998. A variety of other Romantic- and Contemporary-era composers are also included, such as Caryl Florio, Percy Grainger, and Jacques Ibert.
The performance will take place:
Sunday, April 18, 2010
2:00 p.m.
St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art
107 W. Palace Avenue
Santa Fe
Admission is free, with donations gratefully accepted at the door.
For more information, please visit www.concordiasantafe.org or call 505-795-9979.
Best Performance Art
by Gail Perry, Washington, D.C.
October 2009
Concordia Santa Fe’s concert on October 11, 2009 “The Surreal Life,” titled to correspond with the New Mexico Museum of Art’s current exhibition, aptly featured the element of surprise, juxtapositions and the unexpected. Concordia’s performance was one of the best afternoons I have experienced in a long time. The tone was set by the surrealistic artwork of Santa Fe artist Mark Fossard, commissioned specially for this concert. Dr. Kevin Sedatole, Professor of Music from Michigan State University, guest conducted Concordia Santa Fe in works by Halvorsen, Debussy, Wolfenden, Tichelli, de Meij, and Maslanka. The ensemble’s musicians were wholeheartedly enthusiastic with Sedatole’s selections and direction. From beginning to end, Sedatole and the ensemble’s woodwind, brass and percussion musicians painted the auditorium with a cascade of surrealistic images in sound. Contrary to the descriptions set forth in the program notes, I imagined marching metrodomes; long, flaxen hair that beguiled; and enticed exotic dancers to the sea – long tresses morphed into gigantic waves creating a perfect storm. And, that was just the first half of the concert.
