SONATA FOR SAXOPHONE AND PIANO | Live BBC Radio 3 | Michael Jackson (sax)/ Philip Sharp (pno) | 2015 by Tom Harrold published on 2015-05-10T12:56:58Z Michael Jackson - Saxophone Philip Sharp - Piano 4th May 2015. Live broadcast on BBC Radio 3 tomharrold.net michaeljacksonsax.co.uk Sonata for Saxophone and Piano was commissioned by the Liverpudlian saxophonist Michael Jackson in late 2014, to whom it is dedicated. The work is constructed in three separate movements. Recently, I’ve had an interest in structuring works which evoke a drawn- out accelerando, or some kind of speeding-up, over an extended period of time, and this work is in some ways an iteration of this. Each movement is shorter and more energised than the preceding movement: the second is about half the length of the first, and the third half the length of the second, with the exclusion of the introduction to the third. The extended first movement is really an exploration of disunity between the two instruments. Opening with an elongated piano solo (featuring a plaintive melody which is featured in all three movements), the piece eventually locks into a disjointed, disfigured rhythmic pattern, or groove, which sets the saxophone and piano against each other. The second movement acts as a complete antithesis to the first: the piano colours the saxophone's frenetic, charged material in absolute melodic and rhythmic unity. The third movement can be imagined as something as a paraphrase of both movements in one. Although not having a distinct programmatic element, this Sonata perhaps tops its hat to David Hockney’s landscape paintings of North Yorkshire which I admire greatly. I am struck by the means in which he attracts the eye from the foreground to the rear of the painting with an increase in momentum, often utilising the road in the landscape as the mechanism to achieve this, which in many ways resonates with the structure of this Sonata. T.H. Genre saxophone Contains tracks SONATA FOR SAXOPHONE AND PIANO - mvt I by Tom Harrold published on 2015-05-10T12:56:58Z SONATA FOR SAXOPHONE AND PIANO - mvt II by Tom Harrold published on 2015-05-10T12:56:58Z SONATA FOR SAXOPHONE AND PIANO - mvt III by Tom Harrold published on 2015-05-10T12:56:57Z
