Explorations Vol. 6: Time and Breath

New Thread presents its 6th Explorations concert with a program of cutting edge works for saxophone, drawing from meditative breath, temporal flux, sine tone clusters, dissembled instruments, and vocalization.

The concert opens with Neva Derewetzky‘s “small voices,” exploring time and air, growing from meditative breath to sweeping dynamic swells. Derewetzky writes the saxophone “is an instrument that begs to run… For just a few minutes, I want the instrument to be patient. To take a breath and to wait.” Michael Seltenreich‘s “Ornamentation 1” uses flux in tempo to build a constant pulsing line. The work builds harmonically while always centered around the push-and-pull of time. The program continues with commissioned works by New Thread founding member Erin Rogers and by Victoria Cheah. Erin Rogers‘ “Foliage” utilizes timbral and harmonic shifts to produce slow motion color changes in a gradual transition to noise. Victoria Cheah‘s “Walk for a shell” incorporates fixed media playback alongside the saxophone quartet, exploring how actions along a path may connect you to others. Cheah writes “Pilgrimage journeys put time and effort to work at covering a distance in an offering of respect. Walk for a shell attempts this respect with gestures of tuning, ghosts of words exchanged, and offerings of effort.”