PREMIERE: Morning Comes Always
The South Sound Saxophone Ensemble directed by Dr. Erik Steighner brought my new piece to life late last month.
A day before a national election that Americans of all persuasions are anxious about, I want to insert just a little bit of light and hope into this limbo by sharing some music.
Two Sundays ago, I drove up to Tacoma, WA to help breathe life into my new piece for saxophone ensemble Morning Comes Always—getting together with 14 other saxophonists under the direction of Dr. Erik Steighner, saxophone instructor at Pacific Lutheran University and University of Puget Sound.
The premiering group—the South Sound Saxophone Ensemble, made up of professional musicians, college students, and other local saxophonists—gets together just once per year to perform staples of the saxophone and classical music repertoire in a beautiful setting: Lagerquist Concert Hall
For this concert, the hall’s organ was silent, but 15 saxophones can be just as resonant—and a good deal more nimble—than an organ, so that was no great loss. In fact, the saxophone ensemble’s potential to act-as-organ was something I took explicit advantage of in writing Morning Comes Always; there are many passages where the ensemble issues great blocks of grand sound that rumble your chest and ring in your ears. The setting and visual cue of the organ were perfect.
Morning Comes Always was second on the program after a rousing opener and Dr. Steighner invited me to the front of the stage to introduce the music to the audience, but not before saying some very very kind things:
If the audience (you!) agrees with Dr. Steighner, it will be due in large part to the work he has put in to develop a convincing interpretation of the music and rehearse the group—whose 15 members also bring their own effort and creativity to illuminate the details of the score.
After that, I shared—in my fast-talking nervous way—what I thought the lesson of the music might be: a celebration of the space we are given each day to decide whether we will trace yesterday on today or if we will choose a different, maybe better, path.
And then it was time to be done talking and time to let the music talk:
(Morning Comes Always begins at 36:33)
I don’t want to toot my own horn so I will just say I was very happy with the performance.
The ensemble did indeed issue “great blocks of grand sound”. But equally compelling were the gentle sensitive moments, greatly enhanced by the lovely contributions of the first chair soprano and alto (Minna Stelzner and Jason Parshall) floating above the ensemble in solo passages. The musicians seemed fully bought in: there are few greater compliments than having musicians move to music you wrote as they play it; where technique may have occasionally faltered, the energy was always appropriate—gruff and grainy, pensive, jubilant, all in turn.
This year has been the year of the saxophone ensemble for me: the Oregon Saxophone Ensemble premiered Breathe, Set, Play in June; the Portland Saxophone Ensemble unveiled Romp in July. To close it out with a premiere with South Sound Saxophone Ensemble in such a hall was definitely the crowning moment of my musical year.
Thank you once more to all those who made that performance possible. Each performer/audience member/composer is one node of a dense interconnected web of community that supports any undertaking like this. Talking with folks afterwards, I got the sense that most walked away from the concert with something more than they had come with—my highest aspiration for what I want my music to do.
P.S. Sheet music is now available for purchase for Morning Comes Always for folks looking to perform it!