This past March, I had the opportunity to premiere two new pieces written by my friends at NASA.
No, not that NASA. Though, the first instrument played in space was a soprano saxophone.
The North American Saxophone Alliance (NASA) Biennial Conference is North America’s most attended saxophone event. They host competitions, panels, mock auditions, exhibition halls, and many, many performances and premieres. Its location changes every conference; this year it was at The Ohio State University in Columbus. I had attended the conference once before in 2024 with a previous quartet of mine to compete, and was thrilled to be going back as a presenter with Project Nova, a saxophone sextet that I formed with some fellow students back in September.
Saxophone sextet is a rare ensemble model, with the standard being the saxophone quartet. Our group, Project Nova, was created with the idea that we would be able to travel around the Rochester community and beyond to showcase the Eastman Saxophone Project’s main features: memorization and arrangement.
All of the works we perform are arranged or written by one of our own members. Isaac Boone and Landon Chang wrote the two pieces we premiered at NASA (Landon has actually interned with WXXI Classical before; you can read his blog post about saxophone repertoire here.)
Isaac’s piece, “Prélude à la Kapustin,” is heavily inspired by the music of Nikolai Kapustin as the name suggests. Here we are performing at the most recent Eastman Saxophone Project (ESP) concert:
Landon’s piece, “Ambedo,” is an atonal composition that is based around motivic development. We performed the second movement of this work, “Veins,” at NASA along with Isaac’s piece at the conference.
Rehearsing with the composers while they were playing alongside us was a very interesting experience.
Usually the composer only gets to hear their work a handful of times before the premiere, offering broad or general ideas. In this case, the composers were able to take a much more direct and hands-on approach, considering they were present every time the piece was played. Since they are saxophone players themselves, they knew what each of us was capable of on the instrument. It was really cool to watch them work in real time, having us try out different things and making miniscule adjustments to our parts in order to better fit the music’s purpose.
Two weeks out from the conference, we found out that one of our members could not attend. Finding a substitute was not going to be an issue – we were going to the largest saxophone conference in North America, after all – but finding one that we could trust would be able to learn difficult music in an unfamiliar musical setting with no reference recording would be challenging.
Ultimately, we found one, though I learned a valuable lesson about substitutes in the process. As a sub, you’re expected to fit in with the ensemble you are subbing with as best you can, but the ensemble is also somewhat responsible for adapting to the new performer. I’ve been a substitute plenty of times myself, but this was my first time on the “ensemble” side, and it was tricky at first to adapt in that way.
I’ve always found that performing in studio class is difficult and a bit nerve-wracking, since everyone listening to you at that moment knows about saxophone.
Our performance felt like studio class multiplied tenfold. We were lucky enough to have a recital hall for it (this was not something that was guaranteed to happen), and we nearly filled the hall with approximately 150 audience members who ranged from high school students to established figures within the saxophone community.
Despite these challenges, our performance was a resounding success. Many saxophonists came up to us afterwards to inquire about the saxophone sextet, and Isaac and Landon were even approached by some non-saxophonist composers who congratulated them.
Unfortunately, Project Nova will be disbanding after this academic year due to five of us (myself included) graduating from Eastman. However, I’d like to hope that our performance has inspired at least another six saxophonists to form a sextet of their own, and that maybe a decade down the line, the sextet will be another standard ensemble within the saxophone world.
Matthias Roth is a saxophonist and music theorist, interning at WXXI Classical at the end of his senior year at the Eastman School of Music. He'll be going to graduate school at Michigan State University starting this fall.