The saxophone quartet is regarded above all as a classical jazz lineup but also as an orchestra for arrangements of Baroque and classical compositions. The young Swiss Konus Quartett takes another very interesting approach, dedicated to a radically contemporary version of playing with four saxophones. For their musikprotokoll debut the ensemble perform a new piece for the first time in Austria together with the composer and drummer Martin Brandlmayr. Brandlmayr engages in a bewildering, flitting research into sound sources, putting the live instruments into the context of meandering samples, surveying degrees of distance in space, time and emotions in terms of sound, with the saxophone quartet devising spectral “musical night images.” In his piece Haunted House windows open mysteriously onto surprising spaces of sound, only to close again abruptly. The Canadian, Berlin-based composer and artist Chiyoko Szlavnics has also created a special work for the four experimental saxophonists: she accompanies the quartet with a virtual fifth player whose sinus tones combine with the multiphonic sound of the saxophones to form static and yet tremendously moving landscapes of sound.

Link

https://2018.steirischerherbst.at/en/musikprotokoll/konus-quartett-martin-brandlmayr