Written for and performed by Stephen Leffue.

Edgeplay is a guided improvisation for saxophone and live signal processing (Max).  As the title implies, the piece explores boundaries, thresholds, and extremes.  The saxophonist is instructed to push technique beyond the limits of control and investigate timbre as a delineator of sound:  differentiating registers, distinguishing tone from breath and focused pitch from bands of noise.   The score is a hybrid of text and graphics, left intentionally vague to suggest rather than dictate the performer’s investigation.  The electronics (primarily spectral manipulations of the live saxophone) react to extremes, dynamic and durational, and adjust to the performer over the course of the piece.  The sonic result is a mapping, albeit partial, of the sonic transformations idiomatic to the saxophone when in the capable hands of a trained performer.

Edgeplay (2010) for saxophone and live electronics

DC-based Composer, Audio Engineer, Sound Artist, Educator

Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Stephen ventured east to study composition at the University of Maryland and stayed.

Theatricality, language, and abstraction are themes that continually resurface in his creative work, the majority of which is scored for chamber ensembles, incorporating signal processing and computer generated sounds.  

Stephen has written works for CoMA (Contemporary Music for All) Britsol, the DMC (Devil May Care) Duo, pianist Hayk Arsenyan, saxophonist Steven Leffue, and soprano Stacey Mastrian and has worked closely with a collective of composer-performers he helped found, the Bay Players Experimental Music Collective. His writings on contemporary experimental music have been published in Organised Sound, Performance Research, Perspectives of New Music, and Computer Music Journal. Recordings he has engineered have been released on Navona and Albany Records.

Edgeplay (2010) for saxophone and live electronics

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