Quartet performance and Guest

Website(s) : http://www.tsukubasq.com/ / https://www.facebook.com/TsukubaSQ / https://www.youtube.com/user/tsukubasaxophone

Biography

Tsukuba Saxophone Quartet (JAPAN) performs a wide range of music for saxophone quartet, from classical to contemporary .This quartet concentrates ondeveloping “new” repertory for saxophone quartet. TsukubaSQ have collaborated with many musicians, composers and arrangers such as David Maslanka, Yasuhide Ito, Koji Ueno, Pete Ford and Benoit Menut.
TsukubaSQ won prizes in the28th (2005) and the 29th (2006) All Japan Ensemble Competition. TsukubaSQ also took part in Saxophone Ensemble Competition of Japan Saxophone Association (JSA) and won gold prize in the 9th (2012) and the 10th (2013). In 2012 TsukubaSQ held a recital at the Cultural and Information Centre of the Embassy of Japan (Brussels, Belgium). That same year, performed in World Saxophone Congress XVI (St.Andrews, Scotland, UK).

More information

The performance by Tsukuba Saxophone Quartet will be about 19 minutes. In this performance, TsukubaSQ will play 2 works. In Ingham’s work, TsukubaSQ will co-perform with Scottish Saxophone Ensemble.

List of works;
1. Shoichi Asai – World Premier Piece – about 13 min.
2. Richard Ingham – Mrs Malcolm, Her Reel (Funky Freuchie) octet version – about 4 min.

The performance will have two purposes. One is to present a new saxophone quartet work by Shoich Asai and the other is to accomplish international exchange with saxophone music.

[1. Presentation of new saxophone quartet work by Shoich Asai]
Shoich Asai is one of the most famous young composers in Japan. He was born in 1988. He studied composition and graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts. He was awarded several famous prizes for music composition. He won in the 23rd Asahi Composition Award for chorus, got Togashi prize at the 31st Japan Society for Contemporary Music Award for young composers and got 2nd prize at Senzoku Contemporary Music Composition Award for saxophone ensemble. He studied composition under Ichiro Nodaira, Eisuke Tsuchida, Takashi Tokunaga and Masanobu Shinoda. In saxophone area, his works are played by Nobuya Sugawa, Masashi Oshiro, Yo Matsushita and so on. Not only saxophone area, but he also composed many works for orchestra, chorus, chamber music etc.
Tsukuba Saxophone Quartet commissioned a work of saxophone quartet to Shoichi Asai, which is the first saxophone quartet work by him. We think his work will be great from the technical and musical point of view. We are pleased to introduce a new work by Shoichi Asai in this saxophone congress.

[2. International exchange with saxophone music.]
Tsukuba Saxophone Quartet joined The 16th World Saxophone Congress at St.Andrews in 2012. We were impressed by many performances, players and compositions there. One of the most impressive performances was “Mrs Malcolm, Her Reel” played by Scottish Saxophone Ensemble in the stage of saxophone congress general meeting. After watching that performance, we gave the Japan premiere of this work. We uploaded the video of our performance on YouTube and this was watched by Mr. Richard Ingham and members of Scottish Saxophone Ensemble. They said they liked our performance very much. Now that we are planning to join the next saxophone congress in Strasbourg, and also there is an octet version of this work, we requested Scottish Saxophone Ensemble to join our stage. Thanks to their kindness, they readily agreed to our request.
One of the attractive points of saxophone congress is that we can expand wave of exchange through saxophone music. We are pleased to make such collaboration in our performance. This will be one of the results of saxophone congress in 2012.