Led by NZSO Associate Concertmaster Donald Armstrong, the Amici Ensemble returns, with a fresh and exhilarating programme that defies tradition and delights the senses. This year Donald’s team of Anna van der Zee on violin, Nicholas Hancox on viola, and Andrew Joyce on cello is joined by acclaimed saxophonist Simon Brew in a stunning line-up that blends the elegance of the string quartet with the soulful lyricism and surprising versatility of the saxophone.
Since Adolf Sax invented the saxophone in the 1840s, composers have been enchanted with its sonorities, combining the sax with other instruments in many idioms. Composers such as Debussy and Ravel incorporated the beautiful sweetness of the saxophone in their music, influencing more recent composers such as Russell Peterson and Ellen Zwilich, whose Quintets for Alto Saxophone and Strings will be performed in Greytown.
The concert will open with Peterson’s Quintet, which draws on both classical chamber music traditions, and the rhythmic language of jazz. Zwilich was the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music and has been called “one of America’s most frequently played and genuinely popular living composers”. Her lively Quintet explores all the sonorities of saxophone and strings.
For strings only, Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight” – a slow, luminous meditation on time, memory and loss – is interposed between the two quintets.
After the interval the strings will play Mozart’s String Quartet in F Major, K590, the final work in Mozart’s celebrated set of six “Prussian” quartets. As the work was composed with the cello-playing King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia in mind, the cello has a prominent, lyrical role.
The concert will finish with “Winter” and “Spring”, from the “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires” by Piazzolla, arranged for soprano sax and string quartet by Mary Osborne.
Don’t miss this rare opportunity to experience a chamber music concert like no other – where soaring strings meet the warm glow of the saxophone in a journey through light, rhythm, and resonance.
Amici Ensemble:
Where Classical Meets the Unexpected:
4pm on Saturday 23 May at 57 Wood St, Greytown. Admission $30, children $10. For bookings, contact Ed and Juliet Cooke: Phone 06 304 9497 or efjacooke@gmail.com.
