The quiet city - Sax Ensemble

22 APR / 19:30H

Works by Aaron Copland, Tomás Marco and William Walton
Sax Ensemble
Directed by Santiago Serrate

80 minutes
14€ y 16€

Additional discounts with youth card. 20% discount + 5€ discount vouchers

A two-part concert that includes the Spanish premiere of Copland's urban nocturne, Tomás Marco's work written during the pandemic and a 1951 version of Walton's work on poems by Edith Sitwell.

Quiet City, composed by Copland in 1939 as incidental music for an experimental play in New York, opens the concert. Its protagonist, a young trumpet player, imagined the nocturnal thoughts of people in a big city. Although we will attend its premiere in Spain in its ensemble version, in its version for orchestra it is still Copland's most performed piece.

Tomás Marco celebrates his 80th birthday and this program pays tribute to him with Pandemonium Confinado. The play, written in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, reflects the multitude of feelings we experienced in those days.

Façade, an entertainment, William Walton's work on poems by Edith Sitwell presents a music based on sounds rather than meanings that takes on the tone of the poems. These, abstract, full of assonance and dissonance and focused on the value of sound in poetry, anticipated the contemporary scene. The show was offered in the 1920s as "an entertainment for artists and people of imagination" and had great success in theaters and museums around the world and was even performed at the MOMA in New York. We will listen to the 1951 version.

ARTISTIC FILE

Narrator: Carmen Gurriarán

Sax Ensemble

Maite Raga (Flute)
Salvador Salvador (Clarinet)
Francisco Martínez (Saxophone and artistic director)
Diego Tasa (Trumpet)
Alejandro Sáiz (Violin)
Pilar Serrano (Cello)
Carmen Gurriarán (Narrator)
Jaime Fernández (Percussion)
Manuel Jesús Corbacho (Piano)
Santiago Serrate (Musical Director)

PROGRAM

Part 1

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Quiet City, original version for ensemble, 1939 (13')* (13')* For alto saxophone, bass clarinet, trumpet and piano.
For alto saxophone, bass clarinet, trumpet and piano

Tomás Marco (1942):
Pandemonium Confined, 2020 (7') **.
For flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, violin, cello & piano

2ndPart

William Walton (1902-1983):
Façade, an entertainment, 1951 version (45')
On poems by Edith Sitwell (1887-1964)
For narrator and flute (piccolo), bass clarinet, alto saxophone, trumpet, cello and percussion.

*Premiere in Spain
** 80th anniversary of the composer, 1942 - 2022

BIOGRAPHIES

SAX ENSEMBLE

Sax Ensemble was born in 1987 with the aim of promoting the creation and dissemination of contemporary music. It is a flexible chamber ensemble made up of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, saxophone quartet, piano, percussion and electroacoustic music, but with the participation of other instruments in its performances when necessary. Its wide repertoire, along with traditional works, includes mainly scores by contemporary composers, both Spanish and foreign.

It is, to date, the only chamber ensemble awarded the National Music Prize for Performance (1997) for its contribution to Spanish music. Its catalog includes twelve works by Spanish and European composers and, since 1993, the Sax Ensemble Foundation has been commissioning works from Spanish and foreign composers and carrying out high-level pedagogical activities.

Download the program here

Collaborators