The Literary Saxophone
Website(s) : http://allensax.com / http://www.jessejonescomposer.com/ / http://www.jasonthorpebuchanan.com/
Two world-premiere works for solo saxophone, both based upon great pieces of English-language literature.
Biography
In response to his recent New York solo debut, the Examiner opined that saxophonist Andrew J. Allen had “performed brilliantly.” He has appeared with orchestras throughout the United States and has been heard as a soloist and chamber musician throughout North America and Europe, including performances at the Sixteenth World Saxophone Congress in St. Andrews, Scotland; national and regional conferences of the North American Saxophone Alliance; and the College Music Society National Convention. As an advocate of new music, Dr. Allen has premiered more than a dozen works for the saxophone by composers such as Jay Batzner, Greg Simon, and Annie Neikirk. As a scholar and pedagogue, his educational and critical writings on music have appeared in The Instrumentalist.
More information
This program will present two world-premiere works for solo saxophone, both based upon great pieces of English-language literature. The first, Jesse Jones’s “Leda Monologue,” is an unaccompanied work for alto saxophone that is based on Yeats’s poem, drawn from the ancient myth of Leda and the Swan. Through an incredible ground-breaking approach to saxophone technique, Jones delivers a very important new work of extreme emotional impact.
Jason Buchanan’s work “pulp” for alto saxophone and electronic accompaniment is, by contrast, based on the writings of the American underground poet and novelist Charles Bukowski, who wrote of troubled love and life on the streets. This piece will be of incredible technical and emotional complexity, and will offer an incredibly exciting new sound-world. Both pieces, together, will help to forge a new path in the saxophone’s long history as the most lyrical of musical instruments, albeit with new sounds and techniques.
P.S.–Both of the works listed above will be new premieres at the World Congress, if selected. As such, no recordings of them exist to date. The file chosen to represent M. Allen’s playing is a recent live recording of Benjamin Boone’s “Election Year.”