The four of us have long been thinking about ways we can work with other art mediums in concert settings, because we can reach our audience on a deeper level by collaborating with other artists to bring our visions together. Our first performance at the 2018 Chamber Music Northwest Summer Festival was a collaboration like this, and it was truly one of our most enjoyable and meaningful performances yet!
We worked with playwright Harry Clark and actor Harold Dixon to explore a figure near and dear to our hearts as saxophonists: Adolphe Sax. Sax’s life was fraught with ill-fated accidents and sabotage, and through sheer force of will the saxophone survived and continues to thrive today. Harry Clark captured this brilliantly in the script, and Harold Dixon breathed life into the man to whom we owe so much.
To simply call the composition a “play” would be a grave understating of the multifaceted experience. It was truly that: an experience. Harry Clark assembled images of people and artifacts, and they were projected in the house to give the audience an encompassing context of Sax’s life, the situations he dealt with, and the nature of his creations. Kenari Quartet provided incidental music from a wide range of styles, and we even had a few speaking lines as well!
We are thrilled with this project because it is in line with one of Kenari Quartet’s fundamental missions: to engage our audience with an experience that leads them to understand the saxophone as a wholly legitimate classical instrument. The vast majority of concert-goers do not realize that the saxophone was invented as a classical instrument and it then found a second home in the realm of jazz music several decades later – in fact many think the opposite.
While there are always a number of audience members who approach us after a show to say “Wow! We had no idea the saxophone could sound like that!”, this performance connected on a deeper level. Rather, the people we talked to after the performance were eager to hear more classical saxophone playing, and they wanted to learn more about it!
Our residency with Chamber Music Northwest was incredibly meaningful, and we were constantly amazed by the musicians we were sharing the stage with. Our last two performances on the trip consisted of the world premiere and performances of J.P. Redmond’s 9×9: Nine Pieces for Nonet, and we had a truly inspiring collaboration with the Imani Winds and Fred Sherry – stay tuned for a blog post on that!
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