Contrabass Sax Quartet

Heckelphone

Heckelphone

Double Reed CE
Staff member
CE/Moderator
How would you like to see 4 contrabass saxes, playing a specially composed quartet? :emoji_astonished:

Dragon's First Flight

Actually, this is 2 contrabass saxes (from right to left, Blaise Garza and Jay Easton), 1 Bb subcontrabass tubax (me, playing Jay Easton's horn), and 1 Eb tubax (Adam Gilberti, the composer, playing Blaise's horn).

Adam is working on his PhD in composition at UCLA, and talked the other three of us into performing on his recital (I went to play heckelphone, Eb contra sarrusophone, and Eb contra clarinet). Since we were all going to be there, he also composed this quartet, which we played as an encore.

Enjoy!

Grant
 
Wow, next time see if you can get closer in. If you're in Seattle in the future let me know I'll do the recording. I wanted to see who was doing what and close enough to see some of the embouchure stuff. Thanks for sharing!

By the way, I pinged Jay Easton and offered to record the next session. :eek:)
 
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Contra 4tet

Sorry, I was on the other side of the camera ;-)

DSC04338.jpg


We don't travel as a group: imagine trying to carry all those onto a plane ;-) Jay drove the middle two horns down from Seattle (to UCLA) in his van, along with my sarrusophone and Eb contra clarinet (used for other pieces on the concert), along with a few more saxes that he needed for the concert. I'm not sure how Blaise got his contra and the tubax there.

Enjoy,

Grant
 
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Sometimes it's difficult to explain to the average listener exactly what these instruments are. I thought the introduction summed up all the information in very few words. Good job.
 
Agreed. And, looking at the picture again, maybe that cell phone company would put the quartet on one its "four bars" commercials.
 
CellarDweller said:
Agreed. And, looking at the picture again, maybe that cell phone company would put the quartet on one its "four bars" commercials.
Click to expand...

The "cell phone bar" pattern was actually deliberate ;-) We even staged it that way, bringing out the horns one at a time, from shortest to tallest.
 
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