Ara Saxophone Quartet
The Ara Saxophone Quartet will offer a guest artist recital at the SUNY Fredonia on Wednesday, March 22 at 6 p.m. in the Juliet J. Rosch Recital Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.
The concert ends at 7:30 and will be followed by another beginning at 8 p.m, featuring School of Music faculty members in a celebration of the 165th anniversary of his birth and Mozart.
Music for the evening will include Contrapunctus IX from Johann Sebastian Bach’s “The Art of the Fugue,” Caryl Florip’s 1879 composition “Quartette” and Fabian Müller’s 1999 work “Saxophone-Quartette.” The concert will also feature the four-part “Saxophone Quartet,” a newly commissioned work from noted composer and SUNY Potsdam Associate Professor Gregory Wanamaker.
Formed in 1998 in Tallahassee, Fla. by Florida State University students Jonathan Bergeron (alto saxophone), Aaron Pirl (baritone sax), Allen Warren (tenor sax) and Meredith Warren (soprano sax), the Ara Saxophone Quartet specializes in contemporary music and has performed throughout the United States. Originally known as the Sax-Chamber Quartet, the ensemble has won numerous national and international competitions, including the 1998 National Chamber Division of MTNA and the 1998 Carmel International Chamber Music Competition. The Ara Saxophone Quartet was also semi-finalist in the 1998 Fishoff International Chamber Music Competition and received third prize in the 1999 Coleman International Chamber Music Competition.
In 1999, the quartet was invited by the Universitat fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst, in Graz, Austria, to participate in their International Week of Music. The quartet was only the third ensemble to be invited from the United States since the International Week of Music began in 1973.
Recent and upcoming appearances by the Ara Saxophone Quartet include stops at SUNY Potsdam, Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Penn., the First Arts Series in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. and the Artburst Concert Series in Birmingham, Ala.
