Viva Sax!

Margery Smith is a Sydney-based saxophonist whose virtuosity meets the full range of this Australian programme, from mid-century sonatas to later works that lean into jazz, improvisation and ensemble colour.

Seymour Group ensemble
Roger Frampton piano
Daryl Pratt percussion
Daniel Herscovitch piano
Margery Smith saxophone
Mark Summerbell conductor

Gerard Brophy composer
Margaret Sutherland composer
Dulcie Holland composer
Raffaele Marcellino composer
Roger Frampton composer
Paul Sarcich composer

We also hear her versatility across the rollicking Holland sonata, the weaving lines of the Sutherland, the intellectual and rhythmic demands of Brophy, Marcellino and Sarcich, and the semi-improvised jazz style of Frampton.

The programme pairs mid-century Australian sonatas with later works that draw on jazz, improvisation and ensemble colour, recorded with piano, percussion and The Seymour Group.

Reviews

Typically an album such as this will attract reviews uneasy about the bridging of jazz and classical. I am not sure why we set up such barriers to the appreciation, pleasure and growth that comes from music whatever its perceived origins. It is typically Australian that the stylistic 'crashes' implicit in marrying together these pieces is not regarded as a problem - nor is it.

Brophy's piece is chaotically Tippettian: a jazzy jangle, jiving, hiccupping with bells. Marcellino's Fauvel piece is ballistic, modern, explosive and hammering. It howls and shrieks taking in memories of the Soukh along the way and emulating, in its melodic approach, the component struggles of a severed worm. Frampton's Dreaming has more continuity of line but by contrast is touched with greater dissonance. It is a morose little effort. The Sarcich grumbles and growls like a Leviathan or indulges in Blitzkrieg (10.08). He also finds room for an irresistible lyrical inspiration and his dangerous 'take' on this is held up to a Middle-Eastern filter.

The Sutherland sonata is Baxian (Bax was her teacher for a short time), aggressive, jazzy. There is also the same sense you find in the clarinet sonatas of William Alwyn and Arnold Bax but without the melodic drive of the Bax. The work suggests waters deeply stirred (6.30) and the sax pipes querulously among craggy piano statements. The piano writing recalls the ruggedness as well as the delicacy of Bax's masterwork Winter Legends. Nobility and tragedy haunt these pages. The Dulcie Holland piece is roundly contoured dappled with ochre and cinnamon tones and certainly more songfully-inclined than the Sutherland.

Margery Smith and the other artists serve the music well as far as I can make out from music all of which was quite new to me. The recording is quite close but none the worse for that.

— Rob Barnett, Musicweb

Artist

Margery Smith

Tracks

We Bop Gerard Brophy 2:35
Sonata for Saxophone and Piano Margaret Sutherland

Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano Dulcie Holland

i. Con moto 3:30
ii. Scherzando 2:00
iii. Andante 4:08
iv. Scherzando 3:26
Whispers of Fauvel Raffaele Marcellino
Double Dreaming Roger Frampton 9:20
Matters Arising Paul Sarcich

Performers

Seymour Group · ensemble
Roger Frampton · piano
Daryl Pratt · percussion
Daniel Herscovitch · piano
Margery Smith · saxophone
Mark Summerbell · conductor

Composers

Gerard Brophy

Gerard Brophy is a contemporary Australian composer whose colourful, rhythmically alert scores range from solo miniatures to orchestral works and have been heard widely at home and abroad.

Dulcie Holland

Dulcie Holland (1913–2000) was an Australian composer and music educator, known both for a wide body of concert works and for theory textbooks that shaped generations of students.

Paul Sarcich

Paul Sarcich is a New Zealand-born composer and percussionist whose music is marked by rhythmic drive, dramatic flair and a practical ear for what performers need.

Margaret Sutherland

Margaret Sutherland (1897–1984) was an Australian composer whose work ranged across almost every form, with a particular gift for chamber music. She remains one of the most distinctive voices in twentieth-century Australian composition.

Roger Frampton

Roger Frampton’s free improvisations on prepared and unprepared piano open worlds of gamelan, cracked chimes, industrial ticks and sudden melody. As pianist, saxophonist and composer he brought the same searching heat to live Australian jazz quartets that still sound urgent decades on.

Raffaele Marcellino

Raffaele Marcellino writes chamber, choral and instrumental music that favours wit and idiosyncrasy over dogma. His scores can be ballistic and explosive, or spare and enigmatic, always alert to text, colour and the physical life of the instruments.

Where to listen

Viva Sax! is available for streaming through Apple Music. It can also be purchased through the iTunes Music Store.

Viva Sax! is available as a CD. It can be purchased online through Buywell Music or the Australian Music Centre which both offer online ordering.

Product details

Catalogue number: TP132
Total playing time: 24 minutes 59 seconds
Producer: Belinda Webster
Stephen Snelleman
Recording Engineer: Belinda Webster
Yossi Gabbay
Release date: 1998
Label: Tall Poppies
Categories: Improvisation, Jazz, Modern Masterpieces
Genres: Contemporary Classical, Jazz & Improvised
Barcode: EAN 9399001113224

Related recordings

Kingfisher

This CD is the result of a daring project to commission 21 composers to write new works for Halcyon's two singers, Jenny Duck-Chong and Alison Morgan. Presented over two concerts in their 15th anniversary year, and then recorded at Trackdown.

Flash: Marimba Miniatures

Flash is Claire Edwardes’s second Tall Poppies recording: a warm programme of marimba miniatures drawn from her pianist beginnings and life with two young daughters, pairing new Australian works with transcribed children’s piano gems on the five-octave marimba.

On Fire: The Sydney Concert

Tall Poppies is proud to release this fine recording of the Bruce Cale Quartet: Dale Barlow (flute and saxophones), Roger Frampton (piano), Bruce Cale (bass) and Phil Treloar (drums), each an exceptional creative musician. Recorded in 1980 at the Sydney Musicians’ Club, these performances document a unique musical journey.

Coil: Australian Music for Solo Percussion

Claire Edwardes had already marked the Australian contemporary music scene after the ABC Young Performer of the Year award in 1999 and the Freedman Fellowship in 2005. Back from European study and performance, she was active in new-music ensembles and building a solo career.

Woman's Song: Australian Settings of Poetry by Judith Wright

Elizabeth Campbell has long been a tireless promoter of Australian art song. With Tony Fogg in the 1980s she presented the recital series From Nathan To Now; two decades later she brought that energy to a recording of settings of poetry by Judith Wright.

Water Settings: Australian Music for Percussion Duo

Match is a new Australian percussion duo featuring two of the country’s finest players: Daryl Pratt, Head of Percussion at the Sydney Conservatorium and a prolific composer, and Alison Eddington of Synergy Percussion. Most of the programme is by Pratt.