Signum Saxophone

We announce the SIGNUM saxophone quartet release “Echoes”, a new digital album on Deutsche Grammophon. The four musician’s recording showcases the full potential of the saxophone – a modern instrument but one more than capable of capturing the echoes of the past. Two of its tracks, arrangements of works by the hugely successful contemporary composers Joep Beving and Max Richter, will be pre-released as digital singles, complete with e-videos. Watch and listen to Ab Ovo (arr. Knoth), from Beving’s album Prehension, released on 1 December 2020.

On the album Starry Night, a new release from Berlin Classics, Alexej Gerassimez and the SIGNUM saxophone quartet explore new musical terrain. The unprecedented combination of percussion and saxophone quartet offers an innovative and inventive voyage in sound. Its focus is on infinity: it places familiar classics like Holsts The Planets alongside contemporary works like Gerassimezs own composition Rebirth. Starry Night shows off the five virtuosos in all their musical versatility and love of experimentation, as they journey through the cosmos and visit distant galaxies. In choosing the repertoire, the musicians took their inspiration from the great questions that have face humanity: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going to? Musically, the pieces lead us into deep space, but also into the depths of human subconsciousness into our dreams, fears and longings. A realm of contrasting experiences opens up, familiar and amazing, comforting and stimulating, romantic and other\-worldly.

SIGNUM saxophone quartet will release their first album on Berlin Classics. The quartet hasmadea name for themselvesin various exciting projects(e.g. working with Alexej Gerassimez for his solo album on Berlin Classics) With Chameleon they show how colorful the sound of the saxophone is. The present a diverse selection of music from classical (Glazunov, Bloch, Haydn, and more) aswell as pop and rock.

Virtuoso saxophonist Christian Forshaw is joined by a consort of Tenebrae singers, in an ethereal sequence of penitential settings for Passiontide. Combining elements of ancient and modern to stunning effect, Forshaw and Tenebrae bring new colors and context to music by Gibbons, Tallis and Hildegard von Bingen in a series of new arrangements and compositions.

This album marks the culmination of a landmark project to re-imagine new works from old for saxophone, choir and organ. Celebrated saxophonist Sam Corkin is joined by Canterbury Cathedral Choir to bring a fresh perspective to some well-loved repertoire, recorded within the iconic surroundings of Canterbury Cathedral. Featuring fifteen specially commissioned works by leading composers including Gabriel Jackson, Errollyn Wallen and Roderick Williams.

Signum presents 3 concertos from eminent British composer Christopher Gunning, all composed for performance by colleagues and friends – Catherine Handley, Michael Whight and Craig Ogden. Christopher Gunning has composed twelve symphonies, as well as concertos for the piano, violin, cello, flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, and guitar; many of these have now been recorded. He has also composed many scores for films and television dramas, including Agatha Christie’s Poirot, La Vie en Rose, Middlemarch, Cold Lazarus, Rebecca, Under Suspicion, Firelight, The Big Battalions, Wild Africa, When the Whales Came and Porterhouse Blue. With a career spanning 50 years, he has won 4 BAFTA and 3 Ivor Novello Awards, and BASCA’s prestigious Gold Badge Award. Christopher studied composition with Edmund Rubbra and Sir Richard Rodney Bennett at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. After a hugely successful career writing for the big and small screen he is now focused on his classical work and releases.

In his new Saxophone Concerto, Gabriel Prokofiev explores a side of classical music usually seen as forbidden by modern contemporary composers: melody. This aspect was incorporated at the request of the soloist, Branford Marsalis, allowing Prokofiev to revisit characteristics of the classical tradition not usually heard in contemporary music, giving the saxophone an open canvas. Prokofiev’s Bass Drum Concerto shows the versatility of the instrument, despite only being used in a very basic fashion in classical music as a whole. Prokofiev experiments with how the bass drum is struck, where it is struck, and what it is struck with throughout the piece, producing a variety of sounds, colours and textures.

The great French saxophonist Marcel Mule reinstated the saxophone course at the Paris Conservatoire in 1942, after the instrument had last been taught there by Adolphe Sax himself in 1871. Mule attracted a number of composers to write for the instrument, and on this disc Canadian saxophonist Michael Ibrahim revives the important legacy of Mule, with some quinessentially French music.