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Stories   >   Signum Saxophone Quartet - Echoes turned out to be a very colorful album with a calm mood / BR KLASSIK

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Signum Saxophone Quartet - Echoes turned out to be a very colorful album with a calm mood / BR KLASSIK

Posted: January 15, 2021

With their instruments made of a lot of sheet metal and little wood, the four guys have a very unique sound vision. The stage is rocked - and on their new album "Echoes" they conjure up the finest sounds.

Bla? Kemperle (soprano saxophone), Hayrapet Arakelyan (alto saxophone), Alan Lu?ar (tenor saxophone) and Guerino Bellarosa (baritone saxophone): this is the SIGNUM Saxophone Quartet. When he started out in 2006, the fee was sometimes only enough for a burger after the concert. Meanwhile, the hymns of praise for the unique sound of the formation are pouring out - and the guys have arrived in big business. The new album "Echoes" was released by Deutsche Grammophon.

No matter what we play. We always want our own color.

As far as the repertoire is concerned, there are no limits for the SIGNUM Saxophone Quartet: The musicians, always smartly clad in black, commute between classical, jazz, Balkan and Latin. The guys are on stage, playing by heart and really accelerating. No wonder that there have been repeated comparisons with boy groups in the press. But they can also be very different: namely, extremely sensitive and intimate. With the new album, says Alan in an interview with SWEET SPOT, it is now about playing pieces that correspond to our present, both old and contemporary. And because after almost a year of Corona this is always part of it, not least the loneliness plays a role on "Echoes".

Ten pieces made it on "Echoes", by ten different composers: John Dowland, Max Richter, Philip Glass, Gabriel Fauré, Peter Gregson, Joep Beving, Tomaso Albinoni, Paul Hindemith, Peteris Vasks, Guillermo Lago. More about the playlist here.

SIGNUM saxophone quartet & Hila Karni - On the Nature of Daylight (Transc. For Saxophone and Cello) |  Image source: Deutsche Grammophon - DG (via YouTube)SIGNUM saxophone quartet & Hila Karni - On the Nature of Daylight (Transc. For Saxophone and Cello)

Overall, "Echoes" turned out to be a very colorful album with a calm mood. The recordings were made in the Berlin Meistersaal, the legendary, listed former chamber music hall near Potsdamer Platz, which was used as a recording studio for a long time. Bernstein and Karajan have already recorded here. Alan raves about the great acoustics. Because that the sound is right, that it gets something special, is one of the most important things in the Signum Saxophone Quartet, he says. The optimal sound is always being worked on, whether in the large hall or for an open air performance.

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