William Bolcom - Concerto for Soprano Saxophone скачать в хорошем качестве

William Bolcom - Concerto for Soprano Saxophone

Concerto for Soprano Saxophone (2015) by William Bolcom (b. 1938) Brian Kachur, alto saxophone Nathan Canfield, piano 0:00 I. Lively, with humor 5:03 II. Serenade 8:54 III. Shimmy Performed on March 18, 2025 in Galvin Recital Hall at Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music. Presented as part of my second recital towards fulfillment of the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Northwestern University. Audio and video editing by Taimur Sullivan. William Elden Bolcom (b. 1938) is a Grammy Award-winning American composer and pianist from Seattle, Washington. He received compositional instruction from the University of Washington, Mills College, Stanford University and the Paris Conservatoire. Bolcom’s main composition teachers include Darius Milhaud, Leland Smith and Olivier Messiaen. He taught composition at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance from 1973 to 2008, being named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Composition in 1994. Turning 81 years old this year, he currently resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan and continues to compose to this day. As a pianist and performer, Bolcom has collaborated with vocalist Joan Morris, whom he married in 1975. They often recorded and performed works in the style of show tunes and parlor songs. The couple have recorded over two dozen albums together; the first of which, After the Ball, was nominated for a Grammy Award. Bolcom has received countless honors and awards over the course of his career, including the Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy Award, the National Medal of Arts and the 2éme Prix de Composition at the Paris Conservatoire, to name a few. Bolcom’s body of work encompasses a wide range of genres and styles, from serialism to ragtime, and jazz to traditional opera. He has composed four major operas, nine symphonies, numerous piano rags, cabaret songs, organ compositions, various concerti for solo instruments, and everything in between. Some of his most notable works include his Gospel Preludes for organ, his Three Ghost Rags for solo piano, his song cycle Songs of Innocence and of Experience, his operas McTeague and A Wedding, as well as his Concerto Grosso for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra. William Bolcom writes the following regarding his composition: The soprano saxophone had far fewer proponents in jazz’s classical era than either the alto or tenor, and the only name that comes to mind quickly is Sidney Bechet. This has changed a great deal in the last few decades, and it helps that newer saxophones are considered better in tune and general construction than the old ones. I’ve also found the soprano saxophone to be sensitive and expressive enough to play for instance my Aubade, which was written for the oboe. It can cross the divide between classical and other music easily when asked. I felt this concerto to be in a celebratory mood, as I feel I’m beginning to understand the band in a way I didn’t when only writing for orchestra. In the last years I’ve been exploring the possibilities inherent in the band and can say with certainty that this whole concerto would have been far different had it been first conceived for orchestra, as were my Saxophone Concerto Grosso and Clarinet Concerto before their band versions appeared. In an orchestral milieu, even with its growing credibility in the classical world, a soprano saxophone might feel a little like an ugly duckling (which after all will present itself at the end as a swan) as soloist; the meeting might thus be somewhat confrontational and dramatic in dialogue with the orchestra, opening its own wealth of musical possibilities. In the band the soprano saxophone is totally at home and can converse with colleagues like the friendly discourse between piano and orchestra as in a Mozart concerto, and this pushes the dialogue into a more collegial direction and a very different mood. Though I can conceive that a later orchestral version could be fine, I wanted this concerto to feel right now totally like a band piece. There are three movements in this Concerto. Lively, with humor contrasts the opening material featuring the high register of the saxophone with a more bluesy second theme in the lower part. Serenade follows with a sort of South Seas rhythm-and-blues atmosphere. Shimmy tosses itself between a jazz-type “head” with what customarily follows versus a 1960s early-rock-style hymn with 1930s echoes. These two things together grow into an apotheosis, ending the concerto. William Bolcom’s Concerto for Soprano Saxophone was commissioned by a consortium of ten saxophonists and their affiliated ensembles, under the coordination of Christopher Creviston, Gary W. Hill, and the Arizona State University School of Music.