Ensemble SAXOLOGIE

Website(s) : http://www.ensemblesaxologie.com / http://www.giancarloscalia.com / http://www.musique.umontreal.ca/personnel/gougeon_d.html

Biography

Inspired by Daniel Kientzy’s thesis, Ensemble SaxoLogie is one of the few Montreal saxophone quartet desirous to bring Quebec’s serious music out of it’s nest. Ensemble SaxoLogie is active on the scene by their commissions to emergent composers as well as their participation to numerous events valuing the richness of interprets and composers exchanges.

Charged with the duty to pass on our masters great works, the ensemble’s concern is mainly to give the world access to those who constitute and will constitute the québécois’ cultural heritage. Performing a creation of a young and talented colleague and an established piece from a renowned Quebec’s composer, the recital we are offering on 2015 SaxOpen is a sincere reflection of this commitment.

More information

Ensemble SaxoLogie’s goal is to ensure the transmission of the established composers’ saxophone quartet repertoire as well as to encourage the young ones to discover the extended possibilities this kind of group has to offer. The recital we propose for this year’s SaxOpen is the mirror of our engagement and consists in a gathering of two pieces which represent the link between our past and future, opening a window on the québécois’ musical art for a worldwide audience.

The opening of the concert is the result of a recent and successful collaboration with a young skilled musician. Pianist and composer originating from Montreal, Giancarlo Scalia has performed as a soloist as well as an accompanist not only in Canada, but also in France, Austria and Italy. As a composer, his music has been heard thoughout Canada, United States and Europe. Holding a Masters degree in piano performance also as in instrumental compostion from the University of Montreal, where he studied with panists Jimmy Brière and Marc Durand and composer Denis Gougeon, the young artist has written for many soloists and various ensembles, and participated to several vocal accompaniement programs such as the Académie Francis Poulenc in France and the Wiener Musikseminar in Austria. The premiere performance you will be hearing at the SaxOpen 2015, dedicated to Ensemble SaxoLogie, is inspired and named after the famous Les Fleurs du Mal’s poem “À une passante” by Charles Beaudelaire.

Quebec abounds in passionate and renowned composers who chose the saxophone quartet as their creative medium. Showing these artists the respect they deserve for their work, we feel that it is our obligation to bring to a large audience the fruit of their labor, allowing them to discover and appreciate the cultural product from our homeland.

In this perspective, the second piece of our concert is one which is well worth discovering. It is the composition eminent composer Denis Gougeon, known as one of the most important composers in Canada. With a catalog full with more than 100 works from solo to orchestra, concertante to chamber music along with theater music and ballet, his music is sensitive, lyrical and characterized by its dynamism. This great artist enjoys a recognition that goes beyond frontiers and has been highly rewarded: after Claude Vivier, Gilles Tremblay and Ana Sokolovic, he is now one of the few chosen by the Société de Musique Contemporaine (SMCQ) to be the object of an Hommages series. “Quatre Inventions” has been written in 1991 for the saxophone quartet QUASAR.

Ensemble SaxoLogie is happy and proud to offer an audacious program tough profoundly lyrical, sensitive and modern, which we have no doubt will be strongly appreciated as much by the music-lovers as by our experienced fellow saxophonists.