Album: Lunar Saxophone Quartet, These Visions (Signum Classics)

The Lunar Saxophone Quartet is reliant largely on specific commissions, which gives their repertoire a modern flavour, with pieces written for them by composers such as John Metcalf and Hilary Tann.

Both have work included here, alongside younger Welsh composers such as Christopher Painter, whose five-part Lunar Seas suite bestows descriptive realisations of moon features – eg. the misty "Sea Of Vapours" and the animated "Ocean Of Storms". Metcalf's On Song features gently interleaving lines of soprano, alto and tenor saxes over resonant baritone, while Tann's Some Of The Silence is inspired by a haiku, "a deep gorge.../some of the silence/is me", and presents a world of calm and solitude.

DOWNLOAD THIS On Song; Some Of The Silence; Lunar Seas