Red Clay Saxophone Quartet
Susan Fancher, soprano saxophone
Robert Faub, alto saxophone
Steven Stusek, tenor saxophone
Mark Engebretson, baritone saxophone
Faculty and Guest Artist Recital
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
7:30 pm
Recital Hall, Music Building
Program
O Waly, Waly (1999) Ben Johnston
(b. 1926)
Every Thing Must Go (2007) Martin Bresnick
I. Andante (b. 1946)
II. G.L. in memoriam
III. Pensoso, con sobrio espressione
Drastic Measures (1976) Russell Peck
I. Poco adagio, molto espressivo (1945-2009)
II. Allegro
Intermission
Eli, Eli from Tikvah (2007) Burton Beerman
(b. 1943)
Alaric I or II (1989) Gavin Bryars
(b. 1943)
Super Glue (2012) Mark Engebretson
I. Krazy Glue (b. 1964)
II. Hot Glue Gun
III. Liquid Nails
The Red Clay Saxophone Quartet was formed in 2003 when the fates conspired to
bring four internationally recognized saxophonists (Susan Fancher, Robert Faub,
Steven Stusek and Mark Engebretson) together in Greensboro, North Carolina. The
RCSQ takes its name from the area's luscious red soil. The Quartet presents a varied
repertoire from classical to jazz to new music to tango, featuring music by composers
such as Ben Johnston, György Ligeti, Chick Corea, Perry Goldstein, Francis Poulenc,
Alejandro Rutty, Ben Boone, Steve Reich, Mark Engebretson, Martin Bresnick, Burton
Beerman and Gavin Bryars. Red Clay offers a variety of concert programs, including
Sax Appeal, French Connections, Composers of the Carolinas, Never Too Tango and
Tikvah.
Susan Fancher is known for her deep and poetic musical interpretations. A much
sought after performer of new music, she has inspired and premiered dozens of new
works for saxophone. Susan Fancher’s career has featured hundreds of concerts
internationally as a soloist and as the member of chamber music ensembles, with
performances in many of the world's leading concert venues and contemporary music
festivals. She appears on over 20 CDs available on Philips, New World Records, Lotus
Records Salzburg, University of Arizona Records, Red Clay Records, Extraplatte and
Innova Records. Susan Fancher is a regularly featured columnist for the new online
magazine Saxophone Today. She is an artist clinician for the Selmer and Vandoren
companies and teaches saxophone at Duke University.
Robert Faub is an accomplished classical soloist, chamber musician, jazz artist and
educator. As a founding member of the Red Clay Saxophone Quartet he has
performed and recorded extensively, and has contributed to the commissioning and
premieres of dozens of new works for saxophone quartet. Prior to the formation of
RCSQ, Robert toured and recorded with the New Century Saxophone Quartet. He
appears on New Century's recordings Standards and A New Century Christmas.
Robert is on staff at High Point University, where he teaches Applied Saxophone,
Music Core (music history, theory and ear training) and directs the Jazz Ensemble. He
is also the music theory instructor and Director of Bands at Caldwell Academy in
Greensboro. Robert is an artist/clinician for Selmer and Vandoren.
Artist-professor of music at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, Steven
Stusek has built an international reputation with regular concerts and master classes
throughout France, Holland, Germany, Canada, China, and the US. He regularly
performs with pianist Inara Zandmane, the renowned Red Clay Saxophone Quartet,
the Eastwind Ensemble (a reed quintet consisting of saxophone, oboe, clarinet, bass
clarinet and bassoon) and as an orchestral soloist. In addition to being a clinician for
Dansr/Vandoren and Yamaha, he is Past-President of the North American Saxophone
Alliance.
Mark Engebretson is Associate Professor of Composition and Electronic Music at the
University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the recipient of the 2011 North
Carolina Artist Fellowship in Composition, and has received major commissions from
Harvard University’s Fromm Music Foundation and the Thomas S. Kenan Center for
the Arts. He studied at the University of Minnesota (graduating Summa cum Laude),
the Conservatoire de Bordeaux (as a Fulbright Scholar), and Northwestern University,
where he received the Doctor of Music degree. At Northwestern he studied
composition with M. William Karlins, Pauline Oliveros, Marta Ptaszynska, Michael
Pisaro, Stephen Syverud and Jay Alan Yim and saxophone with Frederick Hemke.
His teachers in France were Michel Fuste-Lambezat and Jean-Marie Londeix.
Notes on the Program
O Waly, Waly by Ben Johnston
North Carolina’s own Ben Johnston is one of contemporary music’s most influential
composers. For 35 years, 1951-1986, he taught at the University of Illinois, in touch
with composers the likes of John Cage, La Monte Young and Iannis Xenakis. Nine
string quartets form the core of Johnston’s output. His best-known work, String
Quartet No. 4, is a series of variations on the hymn “Amazing Grace.” Ben Johnston’s
music is rooted in hymnody and jazz and can be enjoyed by those who have no
knowledge of the compositional theories behind it. The one modern technique that
has held Johnston’s lifelong allegiance is the use of microtonality. Johnston uses
potentially hundreds of pitches per octave in his music. Similar to his famous
“Amazing Grace” quartet for strings, Johnston’s O Waly Waly for saxophones is a set
of variations on a familiar tune. In this case, the tune is a 17th century Scottish folk
melody. Johnston’s use of extended just intonation lends this piece the same
wonderful purity, as well as moments of haunting dissonance, for which his music
is so widely loved and admired. Every Thing Must Go by Martin Bresnick
Every Thing Must Go,
And does—
As in these three movements,
Now going, now gone.
(Martin Bresnick)
One of America’s most celebrated living composers, Martin Bresnick was born in
New York City in 1946 and was educated at New York City’s High School of Music
and Art, the University of Hartford, Stanford University and the Akademie für Musik
in Vienna. His principal teachers of composition include György Ligeti, John
Chowning and Gottfried von Einem, all significant figures. He is Professor of
Composition and Coordinator of the Composition Department at the Yale School of
Music, and has held visiting professorships at many colleges including Duke
University. The three movements of Every Thing Must Go are titled I. Andante, II. G.
L. in memoriam and III. Pensoso, con sobrio espressione. The first movement begins
quietly and builds to a full, chant-like section of flowing eighth notes. The second
movement uses the pure tuning of the natural overtone series and is the longest of the
three movements. This glorious movement is in fast 12/8 meter, with full soaring
lines in all the saxophones giving way to a joyous dance-like section. The piece ends
with an exquisitely beautiful and poignant slow movement in 6/4 meter.
(Susan Fancher)
Drastic Measures by Russell Peck
Russell Peck was a graduate of the University of Michigan, where he received Masters
and Doctoral degrees in composition. His teachers included Clark Eastham, Leslie
Bassett, Ross Lee Finney, Gunther Schuller, and George Rochberg. His orchestral
compositions received over 2,000 performances by more than 200 orchestras in the
United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. "During my brief university teaching career,
I came into contact with excellent saxophonists at Northern Illinois University who
had a quartet and wanted a piece from me. That's how I came to write Drastic
Measures in 1976. A year later I went to the School of the Arts in North Carolina
where James Houlik had a great saxophone studio and a wonderful student quartet
that became the New Century Saxophone Quartet. I touched up the piece for them
and that became its final form. The first movement is slow, lyrical and polyphonic,
highlighting the serious capabilities of the ensemble. The virtuosic second movement
is more blues, jazz, and rock-oriented, and highly energized, even including slap-
tongue accents. It's also rhythmically complex. What maintains the classical integrity
of the piece despite the popular flavor in the second movement is its tight formal
coherence. A three note motive heard as an accompaniment figure at the very
opening of the first movement becomes the basis for the whole piece, reaching several
climactic expressions in the second movement."
(Russell Peck)
Eli, Eli by Burton Beerman
Composer/clarinetist Burton Beerman’s music spans many media, including, solo,
chamber, and orchestral music, interactive real-time electronics, interactive video art,
theatre, dance, and musical score for documentary films. His works have been the
subject of international, national and public television and radio broadcasts, including
ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, NPR and PBS. Beerman’s works have been recognized by
over thirty professional journals and publications, and his activities have received
national and public television networks broadcasts. Most recently, his 90 minute
multimedia chamber oratorio TIKVAH (“Hope”) was featured on PBS. TIKVAH,
scored for saxophone quartet, soprano voice, digital video/film and dance ensemble
based on the memoirs of living Holocaust survivor Philip Markowicz, has received
over twenty performances to critical acclaim. “Beerman’s “Tikvah” breathes a
stunning honesty musically and sets an ardent mood of inspiration”
(Atlanta Journal Constitution).
Alaric I or II by Gavin Bryars
Gavin Bryars was born in Yorkshire in 1943. His first musical reputation was as a jazz
bassist working in the early sixties with improvisers Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. He
abandoned improvisation in 1966 and worked for a time in the United
States with John Cage. Subsequently he collaborated closely with composers such as
Cornelius Cardew and John White. From 1969 to 1978 he taught in departments of
Fine Art in Portsmouth and Leicester. During the time he taught at Portsmouth
College of Art he was instrumental in founding the legendary Portsmouth Sinfonia.
He founded the music department at Leicester Polytechnic (later De Montfort
University) and was professor of music there from 1986 to 1994. "Alaric I or II was
written during the summer of 1989 when I had no access to any instrument or
recording equipment and so the musical references that I wanted to include were
done, imperfectly, from memory. These included parts of my second opera, Doctor
Ox’s Experiment, the work of the Argentinean bandoneon player Dino Saluzzi, and so
on. I also included a number of extended techniques, including circular breathing,
multiphonics and extreme registers. The piece is technically quite difficult and,
curiously, it is the lower instruments that have the hardest parts – the baritone sax
having some altissimo passages and, eventually, ending the piece with a brief elegiac
solo in the pibroch piping tradition. The piece is essentially lyrical and even vocal in
character. The title comes from the name of the mountain, Mount Alaric, in South
West France, opposite the Chateau where I spent the summer. No one seemed to
know which of the two “King Alarics” the name referred to."
(Gavin Bryars)
Super Glue by Mark Engebretson
"OK, so they are just songs, tunes. Really. That may well stick, ferociously, in your
ear. A little bubble-gum electronic dance music, a soulful ballad and an edgy prog
rock piece. The saxophone, instrument par excellence of so many popular styles, finds
its 'serious' chamber music world invaded by the entertaining side of things. What I
wanted to do was to create a piece that would be fun for the players to play, fun for
people to hear. The titles are in league with the collection of pieces I've written that
are inspired by the amazing things we find around ourselves (such as the Energy
Drink series, Sharpie, Power Bar and so forth). I guess this relates to the music, since
what we hear around us all day, every day, is a myriad of popular styles, old and
new, playing things that tend to stick in your ear. I considered adding parenthetical
subtitles for the movements (Krazy Glue: hard to beat; Hot Glue Gun: every step; Liquid
Nails: driving thru), but my friend Brian talked me out of it. These subtitles would
have been clues for those who have nothing better to do than to chase down obscure
references and influences. And they relate to the music, of course, as well."
(Mark Engebretson)
