Friday, May 29 at 7pm

MISE-EN_PLACE presents New Thread Quartet’s Electric Sax Vol 4: Mother Earth. Our series returns with a varied program that augments the sax quartet through custom interactive lighting, loopers, video, and audio processing. We will be joined by guest flutist Adeline Debella.

Program
Elliott Lupp – minus (2020)
Alex Christie – Switch System On Click Relay Blink Off (flicker) (2017, rev. 2025)*
William Dougherty – into the blessed darkness (2023)
Erin Rogers – Mother Earth (2014)*

* Written for New Thread Quartet

A multimedia work for saxophone quartet, video, and electronics, Elliott Lupp’s Minus (2020) explores the dramatic and kinetic potential of the individual saxophone and its performer, as well as the quartet as a unified, augmented hyperinstrument. The work’s title references the fact that throughout the piece, each player is asked to subtract or add fingers from otherwise standard fingerings to alter the timbre of each horn.

Switch System On Click Relay Blink Off (flicker) (2017, rev. 2025) by Alex Christie is a system of shifting power structures. Performers’ presence within the ensemble, control over musical material, and autonomy of decision-making evolves over time. A lightbulb is positioned near each performer, cuing changes, representing compositional form, and controlling the actions of the performers. The state of the lightbulbs represent the state of the system that dictates shifts in the ensemble’s power structure.

Composed for the Konus Quartet by William Dougherty, into the blessed darkness (2023) is an expansive piece inspired by a poem by Ukrainian poet Natalka Bilotserkivets entitled “The Saxophonist.” Through the use of foot pedals, each saxophonist controls their own droning multiphonics that pulsate, loop, and distort, creating a slow-mo sonic landscape.   

In Erin Rogers’ Mother Earth (2014) the battle wages between the overpopulated mother planet and Aurora, the outer world – a metaphoric suburban paradise. Our guest flutist, Adeline Debella, assumes the role of Aurora, often in lockstep with the rest of the earthly ensemble, but constantly working toward a better, shinier version.