PRISM Quartet: Ba Yin (The Eight Sounds)
XAS Records

PRISM Quartet: The Book of Days
XAS Records

PRISM Quartet: Tooka-Ood Zasch
XAS Records

The New York Times has described PRISM Quartet as a group that's “set the standard for contemporary-classical saxophone quartets,” an accurate assessment but for one detail: the virtuosic ensemble, consisting of Timothy McAllister (soprano), Zachary Shemon (alto), Matthew Levy (tenor), and Taimur Sullivan (baritone), performs music of such breadth, a better description would omit the classical tag. The outfit's latest EPs argue in favour of that amendment, with their three world premiere recordings focusing respectively on jazz, classical, and experimental content. First up is The Book of Days, which pairs Sullivan, Levy, Shemon (switching to soprano), and guest artist Robert Young (on alto) with pianist Uri Caine; the second, Ba Yin (The Eight Sounds), features music by Chen Yi performed by PRISM with the University of Missouri-Kansas City Wind Symphony; and the third, Tooka-Ood Zasch, is actually a ten-minute piece the group recorded in 1990 (in its original incarnation) with Bradford Terrance Ellis on synclavier. Genre-transcending comes naturally to a quartet that's commissioned nearly 300 works during its tenure and issued twenty-plus releases on Albany, ECM, Innova, Koch, Naxos, New Dynamic, New Focus, and its own label, XAS Records.

Composed in 2015 by Caine, The Book of Days consists of seven movements that in this presentation total thirty-two minutes. Though the New York-based pianist has issued thirty-three albums as a leader (some of them featuring his arrangements of material by Bach, Mahler, Wagner, Mozart, Verdi, and Schumann), The Book of Days is his first work for saxophone quartet. As might be expected, each cut, cued to a different day and time, exhibits a distinct character. “Sunday 11 am” reminds me a little bit of the World Saxophone Quartet's 1994 set Breath of Life, on which guests Fontella Bass, Amina Claudine Myers, and others deepened the album's blues-gospel tone. In keeping with the Sunday morning hour, Caine and PRISM invest their performance with a similarly rich church vibe, at one moment laidback and at another rousing. The music swings infectiously, the saxes honking and strutting jubilantly with Caine's piano adding bluesy flavour.

Though the hour's early, “Monday 8 am” starts the working week on an energized note; the even earlier “Tuesday dawn” is suitably contemplative and stands out for allowing Caine to work some improvised runs into its framework. Like someone wrestling with multitasking at the office, the busy “Wednesday afternoon” opts for sinewy and serpentine polyphony, though a few moments of calm bring relief, while subtle shadings of dissonance in “Thursday 3 am” hint at nocturnal disturbances and flirtations with cacophony in “Friday 5 pm” suggest seething commuters fighting traffic as they exit the city. PRISM's players and Caine are clearly comfortable in each others' presence, and despite differences in mood and style, all seven tracks feature compelling interactions between the saxes and piano, the result a satisfying suite.

In framing two allegro movements with a comparatively restrained central one, Ba Yin (The Eight Sounds) possesses a structure common to Western classical works. But this eighteen-minute concerto by Chen Yi (b. 1953), premiered by the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra with the Rascher Saxophone Quartet in 2001 and recently adapted by the composer for saxophone quartet and wind ensemble, is otherwise heavily infused with Chinese flavour. Yi's music is said to not only blend Western and Eastern traditions but also modern and ancient eras, and all such tendencies are exhibited by the work performed here. In her own words, “In ancient China, music was called ‘The Eight Sounds' (Ba Yin), as it was played with eight kinds of instruments made with metal, stone, silk, bamboo, gourd, clay, leather, and wood”; consistent with that, the quartet and chamber wind ensemble evoke the image of Chinese villagers playing traditional instruments.

Drawing for inspiration from music designed for a ritual ceremony, Yi has the wind ensemble produce background chords of a sheng-like character (the sheng a mouth-blown free-reed instrument) in “Praying for Rain” while the quartet waxes ecstatically at the forefront. In material that convincingly suggests Chinese instruments, flutes, saxes, and percussion interweave boldly for eight lively and colourful minutes. Titled after a state in the Zhou Dynasty, “Song of the Chu” demonstrates how seamlessly the quartet and wind ensemble merge in a sometimes ponderous reverie that's given a stately reading. Executed at a breathless pace,“Shifan Gong-and-drum” finds the quartet declaiming forcefully over an agitated foundation powered by the rat-a-tat-tat of percussion and the wind ensemble's muscular rhythms. Yi's talents as an orchestrator are soundly demonstrated by the performance, with PRISM and the University of Missouri-Kansas City Wind Symphony creating the impression of a much larger ensemble.

Composed by Bradford Terrance Ellis, Tooka-Ood Zasch was recorded in 1990 in Los Angeles but for whatever reason is only now seeing the light of day. PRISM's founding members—Reginald Borik (soprano), Michael Whitcombe (alto), Matthew Levy (tenor), and Timothy Miller (baritone)—execute the single-movement piece using saxophones and EWIs (electronic wind instruments), with the composer on synclavier generating a backdrop of percussion textures. To some degree, the piece feels of its time, especially when the rhythms evoke the ‘80s beatbox era and an earthy vibe associated with graffiti culture. In the opening minutes, programmed beats slam alongside vocal samples, after which the music morphs into a swinging episode heavy in saxophone and metal percussion flourishes; as if to effect a bridge between the quartet's past and present, the performance ends with ghostly tenor musings by Levy.

April 2019