J.B Singelee - Allegro from Premier Quatour

NTEQ plays live from University of Tennessee!

When You Wish Upon a Star

With a mixture of intervallic melodic lines all vying for their turn in the spotlight and big band style shout choruses, The Last word! is as the title suggests, a jazz argument. Different groups within the ensemble pass or steal lines from each other while a baritone sax groove underpins the whole thing.  
Score and part available from www.nefariousmusic.com

The Last Word (Sax 8tet)

Published by Cimarron Music Press: www.cimarronmusic.com/constance

Performed by commissioner Nick Phillips (saxophone) and Linda Charlton (piano) April 1st, 2017 at the University of Central Florida.

Composers Notes:
The inspiration of this work is the constant drive required to get where we want our lives to go, represented by the baritone saxophone melody. This striving melody evolves slowly, reflectively, and reaches towards the heights it wants to experience. When it finally reaches that height it is a celebration of success and joy. Ultimately, the visit is drawn to a quick close as we are reminded that we are not yet there. Yet we are so close – we yearn for it, we can feel it, we intimately know what we are aiming towards. However, the piece ends with a reminder that if we for a moment make excuses, cheat our way through, or give up on ourselves that we will find ourselves right back where we started.

Constance for Baritone Saxophone and Piano (Live)

05 As It Will Never Be

Click here to purchase: https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/no-longer-at-ease-for-euphonium-quartet-digital-sheet-music/22540572

No Longer at Ease is a stand-alone euphonium quartet inspired by Chinua Achebe’s 1960 novel of the same name. In Achebe’s novel a young man is sent to University by his village’s elders in the hopes he will return able to guide and protect his people through uncertain and unwanted colonialist developments. However, the man abandons their plans to pursue his own interests and faces the fallout of his actions upon his return home and in the volatile years to come. Reading such an affective work in the final semester of my Masters preparing to return home was timely and I have found the similarities between my life and Achebe’s art blurred. I began writing this work upon returning home to Niceville, Florida and realizing that both myself and the town I call home have changed drastically.

The piece begins with jarring sixteenth-notes derived from a rising arpeggiated-tetrachord. Ceaseless double tonguing, the lead in the fourth euphonium, and unsettling metric shifts combine for unique and frenetic effects. A yearning melody enters amidst this chaos and is a musical spelling of “home”. The return and developments of the frenetic material culminates in a solo statement of this theme. The middle section represents the home of years past and features a uniquely Niceville quote with fragments of the Niceville High School fight song. These fragments make up each independent line and the music culminates in a triumphant victory. However, this victory is cut brief by the cutting sixteenth-note driven material from earlier. The finale is an exciting mockery of the “home” theme with interjections and exploitations of all previous themes.

No Longer at Ease for Euphonium Quartet

A devilish Funk Chart for brass and percussion
visit www.nefariousmusic.com to buy the score and parts.

Nefarious by Jim Fieldhouse for Brass Band

The traditional carol is given a contemporary feel. Scored for a cappella big band by Jim Fieldhouse

Silent Night

The Abelia Saxophone Quartet perform 'Snowmelt' which was originally composed for the London Sinfonietta and Marius Neset Quartet and premiered in 2016. 

This arrangement is an adaptation of this work for saxophone quartet by Isobel Williams and was recorded at the Royal Academy of Music in 2019.

Marius Neset - Snowmelt arr. Williams

Big Red by Andy Scott, arranged for Saxophone Quartet and CD by Mark White
Available from Astute Music

Big Red - Andy Scott

Blaze was written by Jim Fieldhouse as a personal composition challenge during the coronavirus lockdown of 2020. The piece came about from a desire to contribute to the contemporary euphonium repertoire and a need for some material for the composer to practice while the UK's brass bands were on pause due to Covid-19. This piece means business! It starts with a bang and is definitely not for the faint hearted. Much of the material centres around repeated semiquavers and requires razor sharp precision to bring off the page. The relentless melodic lines are laid over funk influenced grooves and driving bass riffs. Playing with good time and feel are really important for switching between the more traditional brass band style and the all out jazz Funk sections. While the euphonium 1 part is predominantly a high register part and euphonium 4 is very much the bass of the quartet, all four parts present their own challenges of virtuosic technique, range and stamina.
https://youtu.be/-IFVMKz4Rp0

Blaze Quartet

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