MP3 Delta Saxophone Quartet - Minimal Tendencies
An Anglo/US album which features some of the best minimal composers of today, performed by the outstanding Delta Saxophone Quartet
15 MP3 Songs in this album (67:29) !
Related styles: Classical: Minimalism, Avant Garde: Modern Composition, Featuring Saxophone
People who are interested in Michael Nyman Philip Glass Steve Reich should consider this download.
Details:
Notes taken form the album:
There is something about so-called ''minimal'' music which makes it curiously well suited to the medium of the saxophone quartet, which probably explains why there are a large number of pieces written for this combination by composers who might be described as having a foot (or, in some cases, a toe) in the minimal ''music'' pond. In fact, like many of the composers themselves, I rather dislike the term ''minimal'', since it conveys a sense of reduction or devaluation which is simply inappropriate to some of the fine pieces written in this style. Whereas it may have been a reasonable description of certain 1960s and early 1970s pieces which used constant repetition of limited musical material, it certainly does not do justice to what is now a very wide spectrum of musical styles. Yet, neither do potential alternatives such as ''systems'' or ''repetitive'' music, and to subsume everything under the banner of postmodernism does an injustice to many other, very different, musical styles which might be similarly described. So, to paraphrase Winston Churchill in another context, we are left with the worst possible descriptive term for this music, apart from all the others. By including the word ''tendencies'' in the title of our disc, however, we have tried to intimate something of the connection that many of these pieces have with this tradition, while accepting that, with the possible exception of Terry Riley''s piece, which is in any case a very early work, all of these pieces and their composers have progressed far beyond what the description ''minimal'' originally meant.