(Angleterre - England) |
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Our Singing Strength
-by Robert Frost |
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Cover Us With Song [saxophone alto et bande magnétique / alto saxophone and tape] n/d-n/a * [saxophone alto et bande magnétique / alto saxophone and tape]
Kenneth Broadway, percussion * Création / World premiere |
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Kyle Horch has been a prizewinner at many solo and chamber music competitions in Europe and America, including the Jules de Vries International Alto Saxophone Competition (Sweden), the Park Lane Group Young Artists/20th Century Music Platform (London), and the Coleman Chamber Music Competition (Los Angeles).
Since 1987 he has built up a wide-ranging duo repertoire with pianist Pamela Lidiard; they have given recitals at the Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall, British and World Saxophone Congresses, and many other venues in Britain and abroad. Their programmes often include mixed chamber works for saxophone, and Kyle is recording a CD, "ChamberSax! Classic chamber works for saxophone, 1920-40" (Villa Lobos, Hindemith, Webern, Busch, Koechlin, Nin) for release on the Clarinet Classics label in October 1999. He is a member of the Mistral Saxophone Quartet. Other freelance work has included concerts and recordings with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Piccadilly Dance Orchestra, and many other groups. Kyle teaches saxophone at the Royal College of Music in London, and has given masterclasses at institutions in Britain, Ireland, Norway, Switzerland, Australia, and the USA. He contributed chapters on saxophone technique and teaching to The Cambridge Companion to the Saxophone edited by Richard Ingham (Cambridge University Press, 1999). He has also written numerous articles, interviews, and reviews for publication in the Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Great Britain Journal. Kyle's teachers included Frederick Hemke and Stephen Trier. |
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Cover Us With Song was written in 1998 for Kyle Horch and premiered at the British Saxophone Congress. It is inspired by the Robert Frost poem, Our Singing Strength. The tape part incorporates a narration of the poem, which is at times filtered and manipulated; this is combined with synthesized tones and modified pre-recorded saxophone sounds, as well as birdsong. The live saxophone part plays various roles: stating thematic material, musically developing the imagery of the poem, and using the musical and birdsong material as the basis for improvisation.
The new work, provisionally titled Water Music is to be similar in concept, this time with a Walt Whitman text, again using natural sound - this time with water sounds, rather than birdsong - integrated with recorded voice, synthesized sounds, and live saxophone. The new work will complete a set of three works for saxophone and tape written by Denise Ondishko for Kyle Horch (The first in the series was The Botticellian Trees to a text by William Carlos Williams). They can be performed either seperately or as a suite, linked by the American poetry theme. They are ground-breaking, imaginative, and beautiful pieces. With their fresh approach to setting and manipulating a text drawn from the computer music influence of Paul Lansky (pieces such as Six Fantasies on a poem by Thomas Campion and Things She Carried) combined with the spontanacity of live performance and Denise Ondishko's own luminous sensibility, they are certainly a unique and substantial addition to the saxophone repertoire. |
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