New Hudson Saxophone Quartet Frustrates

from the product page on the New Hudson Saxophone Quartet Web site

A little over a month ago the New Hudson Saxophone Quartet released what appears to be a self-produced album entitled New York Rising. I write “appears to be” because nowhere in the packaging is there any mention of a recording label, although credit is given to participating engineers. The CD Baby Web page for this recording (which is available in both physical and download versions) includes a copyright notice:

Copyright - Paul Cohen / Classax Records (194171480690)

However, the name “Classax” does not appear on the physical release; and the number seems to be related to the bar code. (Amazon.com has yet to acknowledge that this recording exists.)

This is but one of several frustrations that the inquiring listener is likely to encounter. However, a few basic facts can be put in order before returning to those frustrations. Cohen is the soprano saxophonist of the quartet, the other players being Avi Goldrosen (alto), David Demsey (tenor), and Tim Ruedeman (baritone). Cohen is also responsible for arranging the two compositions by Aaron Copland included on the album, the three-movement suite that he extracted from the score he prepared for Sam Wood’s film version of Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town and his setting of the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts.” There is also Percy Grainger’s own arrangement of “Lisbon” (the tune found in the first movement of his Lincolnshire Posy suite), scored for saxophone quintet (with Ulrich Krieger playing the second alto saxophone part).

There are also three works written for the quartet. In “order of appearance” on the album, they are “New York Rising” by Joseph Trapanese, “Diners” by Robert Sirota, and David Noon’s first saxophone quartet (with Chris Brellochs playing the alto part). Of these, Noon’s quartet is the most interesting and the most frustrating. The piece is in three movements, the first an Allegro, the second a set of variations, and the last a fugue. The variations movement is the most engaging but also the most aggravating, simply because the booklet never takes the trouble to identify the theme, which is probably a hymn tune with roots similar to that of “Simple Gifts.” Instead, the booklet provides a lengthy biographical statement, which tells the reader a lot about the composer and absolutely nothing about the music. In spite of my vast collection of hymnals, I had yet to identify the theme for the variations, having confirmed only that it was not the source for another of Noon’s hymn-based compositions, “Hymn Variations.”

[added 1:40 p.m.: Through a flash of insight, I managed to identify the source for Noon’s hymn-base variations. I realized that it had nothing to do with any of my past hymn-singing activities and everything to do with the repertoire of Charles Ives. The became my first opportunity to put The Charles Ives Tunebook, compiled by Clayton W. Henderson, to the test. The ninth chapter of this book is entitled “Musical Incipits;” and it is basically an index of every theme that Ives ever appropriated, indexed according to the opening pitches of the tune in the key of C major. This enabled my identification of the hymn tune “Neettleton,” whose first line is “Come, Thou Fount of ev’ry blessing.” Problem solved!]

Curiously, the second and third movements of “New York Rising” are also a chorale followed by a fugue. In this case, however, the odds are good that the chorale was an original composition by Trapanese. Nevertheless, one of the more satisfying aspects of listening to this album involved the ways in which the players negotiated the fugue movements of both “New York Rising” and Noon’s quartet. The distinctive sonorities of the four instruments go a long way in facilitating the efforts of the serious listener to explore the interleaving of the fugal voices.

Sirota’s piece, on the other hand, amounts to a biographical episode. Three of the movements account for past experiences of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, respectively. The title of the first movement is “Road Trip,” since breakfast and lunch required the composer to drive out of his home town of New York. (Dinner required his taking the subway to Astoria in Queens.) Breakfast and lunch are separated by a movement entitled “Neon,” an association with eating places familiar to many (at least among my generation). Taken as a whole, “Diners” makes for affable listening but does little to engage the serious listener.

On the other hand the ensemble itself has a consistently satisfying sound across the entire album. If Cohen acts as the group’s leader, then he definitely deserves credit for his efforts. However, he also seems to have been responsible for the content of the booklet; and the frustrations in that document risk distracting the attention of even the most sympathetic serious listener.