American Saxophonist Chris Condon performs frequently as a soloist and chamber musician and is equally adept across the classical and jazz idioms. He has performed concerts throughout the United States and Canada as well as in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, and South Korea. While specializing in the music of J.S. Bach, Mr. Condon is also an enthusiastic proponent of contemporary and avant-garde music. He is a frequent university guest lecturer on music performance topics and has given multiple presentations for the World Saxophone Congress, the North American Saxophone Alliance, and the U.S. Navy Saxophone Symposium. He is also the founder and organizer of the NATO Saxophone Orchestra.
Mr. Condon's teachers have included Dr. Lawrence Gwozdz, Patrick Meighan, and Arno Bornkamp. While studying at the University of Southern Mississippi, he made his orchestral debut in 2002 as soloist with the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, whose conductor Crafton Beck praised him as having "...the most beautiful tone I have ever heard on the instrument!" In 2005, Mr. Condon accepted a graduate teaching assistantship at Florida State University. A highlight of his study at Florida State was membership in the Equinox Saxophone Quartet who, in 2006, won 1st prize in the MTNA National Chamber Music Competition. In 2007, He continued his studies at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam as a grant recipient from the HSP Huygens Foundation. In 2011, Mr. Condon enlisted in the U.S. Army Band program and has since served with the 282nd Band at Fort Jackson, SC, the 8th Army Band in Seoul, South Korea, and the U.S. Army in Europe Band & Chorus in Germany.
Because of his prominence in the history of music, much has been written about Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Not only is he the preeminent composer of the Baroque period, but his music will forever be looked upon as an example of the highest achievements in counterpoint. The timelessness of the music of Bach can be seen in the fact that it has been arranged for nearly every conceivable instrumentation.
During the period between 1717-1723 while serving as Kapellmeister in Köthen, Bach composed the six Suites for solo cello (BWV 1007-1012). The Prelude of the 3rd Suite takes on a heroic character in its immediate 2-octave descent of the C major scale and arpeggio. From this all-encompassing statement, we then follow a melodic contour like traveling over rolling hills. Bach slowly introduces polyphonic material that will become the crux of the suite, wherein one melodic line splits into two, rocking back and forth between a repeated note and a slowly meandering line. There is a seamless juxtaposition between moments of momentum and stasis, a dialogue which will take varying forms in the following collection of dances.
The first of these is an Allemande, a duple-meter dance taking on an introductory and therefore more formal character. This is followed by a lively Courante in which scale-wise motion builds anticipation to moments of dramatic leaps in an epic display of polyphonic virtuosity. The next movement is a Sarabande, a broad and pensive dance in triple meter in which we get a sense of distance and suspension of time. Next is perhaps the most well known and recognizable of the movements, the two Bourrees. The first of these is in the original major key, a light and playful exchange between two distinct voices separated by octaves to create one continuous melodic line. The second is a more somber and meandering single line in the relative minor. This repeats back to a shortened first Bourree, creating an interplay of question and answer on multiple levels of duration in a perfectly balanced set of dances. This leads to the finale of the dances, a lively gigue in a quick 3/8 meter.
Violeta Dinescu (b. 1953) is a Romanian composer, pianist, and professor who has lived in Germany since 1982. She began her studies of music in 1972 at the conservatory Ciprian Porumbescu in Bucharest, where she studied composition with Myriam Marbe. In 1978 she received her master's degree, with distinction. She also received diplomas in the fields of Composition, Piano and Pedagogy. She started teaching at the George Enescu Music School in Bucharest, conducting courses in Music History, Aesthetics, Counterpoint, Harmony, and Piano.
She has since taught in Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Bayreuth, and since 1996 as professor of Applied Composition at the University of Oldenburg where she maintains a weekly Composer's Colloquium. A prolific composer of orchestral music, chamber music, choral and vocal music, Dinescu has received many international prizes and awards. Major commissioned works include Akrostichon and L‘ORA X for orchestra, an oratorio for Pentecost, Pfingstoratorium, music for the F. W. Murnau silent films Tabu and Nosferatu as well as the ballets Der Kreisel and Effi Briest.
Improvisation für Saxophon builds a bridge between notated and improvised music. While the pitches are strictly notated, the score suggests a freedom of rhythmic interpretation lending an elasticity to the musical space. The pacing and flow of the piece depends on the intuition of the performer to assimilate melodic substance with ones own sense of choreographic pacing and lilt.
Walter S. Hartley (1927-2016) has left an indelible mark on the repertoire of the saxophone, writing over 200 pieces for the instrument. As a child, he showed an early aptitude for piano and composition. Receiving his Ph.D in composition from the Eastman School of Music, Hartley's teachers included Burrill Phillips, Thomas Canning, Herbert Elwell, Bernard Rogers, Howard Hanson and Dante Fiorillo. In 1969 he joined the Music faculty at the Fredonia State University, Fredonia, New York, where he taught until retirement. Throughout his life, he became known not only for his unique compositional style but also for his seemingly supernatural ability to recall and play back any piece of music he had ever heard.
The Petite Suite is a collection of five short movements (an Intrada followed by four dances). The Intrada is a quirky, bombastic romp characterized by gestures of wide intervallic leaps which switch schizophrenically to pointillistic, tiptoeing staccato figures. This is followed by a Tango in which assertive, higher-register melodies and passive, lower motives slowly dance and weave together in a provocative and sultry dance. The Scherzo resembles a furious cat and mouse chase which is contrasted by the following Nocturne, a stark and shimmering homage to the night. The suite concludes with a lively, unmetered Capriccio ending in a four-octave descending cadence.
Paul Bonneau (1918-1995) was a French composer known for his operettas, film scores, and his work as director of music for the Republican Guard. He studied composition at the Paris Conservatory under Henri Dutilleaux, among others. In addition to the Caprice, his other works for saxophone include a Concerto, a Suite, and a jazz concertante, all of which are dedicated to saxophonist Marcel Mule.
Caprice en forme de Valse has become a standard in the saxophone repertoire for its musical wit and charm, virtuosic technical requirements, and approachability. Consistent throughout each waltzing variation is a recurring melodic theme, sometimes hidden within polyphonic writing, sometimes singing alone in a declarative statement. The piece maintains its capricious nature while building to a flourish of chromatic ascent and concluding with a cute and comical statement.
Alan Theisen (b. 1981) is a composer, saxophonist, music theorist, and educator. He is associate professor of music at Mars Hill University where he coordinates the music theory/composition curriculum. Theisen's compositions have been performed throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia. His works combine an expressive melodic sensibility, a diverse harmonic language, and elaborate formal designs. He previously taught at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University (Bloomington) after receiving his Ph.D. in music theory and composition from Florida State University and degrees (B.M. - Music History & M.M. Music Theory) from the University of Southern Mississippi.
Arcanum is the result of a meeting we had after I performed an unaccompanied recital at Mars Hill University in 2012. We both came to the agreement that there did not yet exist an original unaccompanied work for saxophone significant enough to serve as the final piece of a program. We wished for a work with the breadth and scope of those belonging to other, more established classical instruments. Theisen set out to write such a work, and in 2014 I premiered Arcanum for the Neue Musik Forum in Hamburg, Germany.
Theisen writes of his composition: "'Arcanum,' more frequently encountered in the plural 'arcana,' is a profound and mystical secret known only to initiates (for instance the alleged knowledge of alchemists turning lead into gold). Music making, too, is a bizarre kind of magic. I have long been in awe of truly exceptional performers and their ability to conjure notes out of thin air, create sounds and evoke emotions with seemingly little effort, then transmute those ideas into different directions or back into silence in the blink of an eye. In this composition, I sought to capture this capricious and supernatural quality through a seamless thread of variations."
Arcanum is a tour de force for the saxophone, requiring the highest in musical virtuosity and stylistic flexibility and, I believe, is destined to become a standard in the unaccompanied repertoire. A continuous one-movement work with six distinct sections, Arcanum begins by slowly introducing the three-note motif which will return in almost every conceivable permutation and will also serve as material for the basis of improvisation by the performer. The slow introduction and development sections are followed by a menacing scherzo, and a cadenza which includes both strict notation and moments of free improvisation. Following this is a section subtitled "Spiegelsaal" or "hall of mirrors," in which long melodic lines are echoed by their counterparts in inversion. The work concludes with a presto of angular forms of the original motif. Arcanum continues to build in rhythmic torque and tempo until it breaks apart in a chaotic and improvised frenzy.
Performed on a Buescher Aristocrat 282xxx
Buescher mouthpiece, Vandoren reed: blue box strength 5
Re: New Saxophone CDs
Originally Posted by Mobius1
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