Saxophone

Raaf Hekkema: Since I started teaching at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, I have become more conscious of my self-chosen mission: to create a place for the saxophone within the classical music tradition. One way to do this is to forge a stronger bond between the players and the classical tradition, in the knowledge that the saxophone repertoire too is indebted to the great composers of the past. The most influential of them all is, without a doubt, Johann Sebastian Bach.

This is an album featuring some of the greatest music written for Saxophone Quartet in the past thirty years, with a strong stream of minimalism. The Orion Saxophone Quartet came into being in 1989, established by Jeff Benedict and Charles Richard, both of whom were recent products of Harvey Pittel's saxophone studio at the University of Texas. Staunch devotees of Pittel's rich, expansive tone, they wanted to form a group based in Los Angeles that would play in the same bold and unapologetic manner they had studied so assiduously under his tutelage. Ken Foerch, a former member of the U.S. Marine Band, and Adrian Williams, a product of Richard's own studio, proved to be the perfect match in tone quality and musical concept. It is the aspiration of the Orion Quartet to perform a diverse array of music in a manner true to the composer's intent and the style of the era while also exploiting the full tonal and expressive range of Adolphe Sax's grand invention. With a repertoire spanning five centuries, the Orion Saxophone Quartet demonstrates a perpetually robust sonority and superb command of the melodic line.

For its second album on Chandos, the young Ferio Saxophone Quartet presents a set of unique arrangements of milestones from the baroque repertoire, from Corelli via Bach to Handel.