The Red Clay Saxophone Quartet was formed in October of 2003 by four internationally
recognized saxophonists based in Greensboro, North Carolina. Susan Fancher, Robert Faub,
Steve Stusek and Mark Engebretson have distinguished themselves individually as soloists and
members of highly acclaimed chamber music ensembles. Susan Fancher has 15 years of
experience as soprano saxophonist with the Vienna, Amherst and Rollin’ Phones saxophone
quartets. Robert Faub has performed extensively throughout the US and Europe as alto
saxophonist with the New Century Saxophone Quartet. Steve Stusek, saxophone professor at
the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, is an international touring solo recitalist and
chamber musician. Mark Engebretson is a veteran of the Vienna Saxophone Quartet and is
Assistant Professor of Music Composition at UNCG.
Susan Fancher’s tireless efforts to develop the repertoire for the saxophone have produced
dozens of commissioned works by contemporary composers, as well as published transcriptions
of music by composers as diverse as Josquin Desprez and Steve Reich. She has worked with a
multitude of composers in the creation and interpretation of new music including Terry Riley,
Michael Torke and Charles Wuorinen, to name just a few, and has performed in many of the
world’s leading concert venues and contemporary music festivals. The most recent additions to
her discography are a solo CD entitled Ponder Nothing on the Innova label and a recording on
New World Records of Forever Escher by Paul Chihara. Susan Fancher is a regularly featured
columnist for the nationally distributed Saxophone Journal. Her principal teachers were
Frederick Hemke, Jean-Marie Londeix, Michael Grammatico and Joe Daley.
Robert Faub is an accomplished classical soloist, chamber musician and jazz artist. He was
formerly the alto saxophonist with the widely acclaimed New Century Saxophone Quartet, with
whom he performed extensively throughout the United States and in the Netherlands. He
appears on New Century’s recordings A New Century Christmas and Standards. As a soloist, he
gave the first performance of Ben Boone’s concerto Squeeze with the University of South
Carolina Symphony, adding to a long list of works he has premiered. His recording of Andrew
Simpson’s Exhortation, included on Arizona University Recording's America's Millenial Tribute to
Adolphe Sax, was “immaculately played,” according to The Double Bassist magazine. Robert
Faub currently teaches saxophone at UNC Chapel Hill, is on the music theory faculty at UNC
Greensboro, and appears regularly with the North Carolina, Greensboro and Winston-Salem
Symphonies.
Steve Stusek is Assistant Professor of Saxophone at the University of North Carolina at
Greensboro. He performs frequently with Dutch accordion player Otine van Erp in the duo
2Track, was director of Big Band Utrecht and is a founding member of the Bozza Mansion
Project, an Amsterdam-based new music ensemble. The list of composers who have written
music for him include Academy Award winner John Addison. His many awards include a
Medaille d’Or in Saxophone Performance from the Conservatoire de la Région de Paris, winner
of the Saxophone Concerto competition at Indiana University, Semi-finalist in the Concert Artists
Guild Competition, Vermont Council on the Arts prize for Artistic Excellence, and Finalist in the
Nederlands Impressariaat Concours for ensembles. His teachers include Daniel Deffayet, Jean-
Yves Formeau, Eugene Rousseau, David Baker, Joseph Wytko and Larry Teal.
Mark Engebretson is Assistant Professor of Composition and Electronic Music at the University
of North Carolina at Greensboro. A former resident of Vienna and Stockholm, he has received
numerous commissions from the Austrian Ministry of Culture, STIM (Sweden) and the American
Composers Forum Commissioning Program. His Duo Concertante was recently premiered by
the Wroclaw (Poland) Philharmonic. Mark Engebretson has appeared twice as a concerto
soloist with the Brno (Czech) Philharmonic Orchestra. He is well represented as a composer
and performer on the Innova label and has performed with Klangforum Wien, Swedish
percussionist Anders Åstrand and the Intergalactic Contemporary Music Ensemble. His principle
teachers were Michel Fuste-Lambezat, Frederick Hemke, Jean-Marie Londeix, M. William
Karlins, Pauline Oliveros, Marta Ptaszynska, Michael Pisaro, Stephen Syverud and Jay Alan
Yim.
The
Re d Cl a y
Saxophone Quartet
Susan Fancher, soprano saxophone
Robert Faub, alto saxophone
Steve Stusek, tenor saxophone
Mark Engebretson, baritone saxophone
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
7:30 pm
Organ Hall, School of Music
Program
Suite Française (1935) Francis Poulenc (1899-1962)
Bransle de Bourgogne trans. Jonas Forssell
Pavane
Petite Marche Militaire
Complainte
Bransle de Champagne
Sicilienne
Carillon
Quatuor (1931) Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936)
I. Partie
II. Canzona variée
Andante
L’istesso tempo
Con anima
A la Schumann
A la Chopin
Scherzo
III. Finale
Intermission
Nightreach (1998-99) Ben Johnston (b. 1926)
July (1995) Michael Torke (b. 1961)
_____
The hall is equipped with a listening assistance system.
Patrons needing such assistance should contact an usher in the lobby.
Francis Poulenc was one of the most multi-faceted and most loved members of Les Six, the
French composer group of the 1920’s. In 1935, he composed the music to Edouard Bourdet’s
play La Reine Margot , about Margot de Valois, wife of the man who in 1594 was crowned King
Henri IV of France. To create the correct period ambience, Poulenc turned to a collection of
dances by Clauide Gervaise, a composer and violinist of Margot’s time. Poulenc orchestrated
and reworked these dances for a mixed wind ensemble with percussion and harpsichord in such
a personal way that they took on the composer’s own unmistakable character. Noted Swedish
composer Jonas Forssell (b. 1957) arranged this Suite Française for saxophone quartet in 1991.
Alexander Glazunov, born in St. Petersburg, was gifted with an exceptional ear and began to
study piano at the age of nine. He was composing by the age of 11. In 1879, he began
composition studies with Rimsky-Korsakov and progressed “not from day to day but from hour to
hour, “ said Rimsky-Korsakov. Glazunov composed in all genres except opera, w9ith the major
portion of his music written before 1906. He wrote eight symphonies and eight quartets. The
first seven were for strings and the last was composed in 1931 for the saxophone quartet of
Marcel Mule, French saxophone virtuoso and teacher at the Paris Conservatory of Music from
1942-1968. Some of the material from this work was later used in Glazunov’s saxophone
concerto, one of the most often performed works for alto saxophone.
For 35 years, 1951-1986, Ben Johnston (b. 1926) taught at the University of Illinois, in touch
with composers the likes of John Cage, La Monte Young and Iannis Xenakis. Johnston has
since retired to North Carolina. 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. Written using his hallmark “extended just intonation,” Ben
Johnstons’s Nightreach is a stunningly beautiful piece that brings upper partials of the overtone
series down into the normal saxophone range and employs them melodically. The result is a
kind of purity of sound and expression that our equal-tempered world seldom experiences.
Formally, the piece features each instrument in alternating melodic solo statements that respond
to and complement each other in similarly perfect harmony. The drone that is heard continuously
throughout the piece forms a kind of glue by providing a sonic backdrop into which the justly-tuned
sonorities are placed. Of Nightreach, Johnston has these remarks:
" Nightreach was the first and most radical of three works for saxophone quartet which
I composed on commission for the New Century Saxophone Quartet. Like all music I
write it has aims on three levels: (1) to extend performance possibilities on the
instruments used in the direction of what I call extended just intonation, in this case to
make use of actual overtone relations produced by the saxophones: (2) to organize
acoustically the inter-relations of all the pitches used so that the vibration ratios
between all of them are as consonant (as mathematically simple) as possible, using
for this purpose a notation which I developed to help not only in this tuning process but
also in relating the music to more traditional kinds of Western music; and (3) to
symbolize by this process the emotional effort to achieve a tranquil clarity in
meditation in healing contrast to the harsh emotions of ordinary daily life---hence the
title: Nightreach.”
Michael Torke is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and a winner of the Prix de Rome.
His works effectively blend elements of serious music, jazz and rock. In July, Torke intends to
incorporate contrasting themes and moods together in a one movement piece. The work was
composed by translating a rhythmic pattern from the drum track of a popular tune into pitched
material. The composer writes, “Keeping in mind the incredible agility of the saxophone, I wrote
a series of rapid notes that form a foundation, or a kind of ‘directory,’ from which I pull out pitches
to assign to those original drum track rhythms.” Torke says, “The idea that rhythm is intrinsically
human – not just primitive – that we all have hearts that beat at a steady rate and don’t
stop…reminds me of life itself.
The
Re d Cl a y
Saxophone Quartet
Susan Fancher, soprano saxophone
Robert Faub, alto saxophone
Steve Stusek, tenor saxophone
Mark Engebretson, baritone saxophone
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
7:30 pm
Organ Hall, School of Music
Program
Suite Française (1935) Francis Poulenc (1899-1962)
Bransle de Bourgogne trans. Jonas Forssell
Pavane
Petite Marche Militaire
Complainte
Bransle de Champagne
Sicilienne
Carillon
Quatuor (1931) Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936)
I. Partie
II. Canzona variée
Andante
L’istesso tempo
Con anima
A la Schumann
A la Chopin
Scherzo
III. Finale
Intermission
Nightreach (1998-99) Ben Johnston (b. 1926)
July (1995) Michael Torke (b. 1961)
_____
The hall is equipped with a listening assistance system.
Patrons needing such assistance should contact an usher in the lobby.
