This Adventskalender celebrates dreams and journeys.
We now revisit Sweden, where yesterday’s entry took us, but under different circumstances.
A journey can be made for so many reasons: to find a safe new home, to play beautiful music in concert halls, or to seek out new friends to write music reflective of their amazing identities.
Right up until the most recent years, an elderly audience member would approach us without fail after every concert of ours in Sweden, exclaiming that they had experienced the tones of Sigurd Raschèr live, years prior.
What an amazing impression he left on everyone who got to listen to his saxophone!
When our former RSQ colleague John Edward Kelly travelled to Sweden to meet Mikós Maros, there was no festival or concert attached, only the wish to demonstrate the saxophone‘s ability to a young aspiring composer.
What came out of this meeting was a long-lasting friendship and a masterpiece beyond all measurement, Maros‘s “Quartet for Saxophones”.
Miklós composed for the RSQ very passionately, and pioneered possibilities that had never before been dreamed of.
At first glance the manuscript appeared to be everything all at once:
beautiful folk music, and yet simultaneously possibly unsurmountable.
The RSQ was able to invest the blood, sweat and tears necessary to make this work, challenging as it is for player and ear alike, both very much playable and equally stunning.
It is a privilege to perform music for others, and the RSQ has performed this work often, and for audiences and venues both small and large.
Thank you dear Miklós, for your vision and trust in what the saxophones can do!
Featured in today‘s video is a brief history through time, focusing primarily on the earlier travels of the RSQ.
We take a moment to thank our former colleagues who spent so many collective years helping to shape the RSQ into what it is now.
The opening of this composition was rendered so gorgeously and fearlessly in this recording by Linda Bangs.
Two amazing women played in the RSQ during its first chapters:
Linda Bangs, providing the foundation, and Carina Raschèr the melody.
Stunningly, this same balance has found its way into the Quartet‘s current existence, almost 55 years later, with our newest addition, Iria Garrido Meira, on the baritone saxophone and Christine Rall on the soprano saxophone.
