On Air

The Washington Saxophone Quartet pushes classical music boundaries. ____

by Michael Toulouse

WHEN YOUR JOB IS TO SHARE MUSIC WITH AN AUDIENCE, MUSIC FINDS ITS WAY TO YOU. IT DOESN’T MATTER WHETHER YOU’RE BROADCASTING IT OVER THE AIRWAVES, UPLOADING IT TO A STREAMING WEBSITE, OR CONDENSING IT INTO A PODCAST. ONCE WORD ABOUT YOUR PLATFORM GETS OUT, MUSIC MAKERS INEVITABLY COME, BEARING DISCS, LINKS AND EMAIL ATTACHMENTS.

Although I’m happy to consider unsolicited recordings, it’s even better when I am the one making first contact. That happened recently, courtesy of someone else’s music-sharing platform. The announcer on one of my favorite stations introduced a beloved piece by Sir Edward Elgar with few details, aside from a warning that it would be unusual. He was right: I had never heard Nimrod (the climax of Elgar’s Enigma Variations) played on saxophones. It was my first encounter with the Washington Saxophone Quartet, and I definitely wanted to hear more. After I tracked down the disc and ordered it for our collection, I got a friendly email from a colleague. It turns out that Rich Kleinfeldt, a radio host whose work I have long admired, also happens to be a professional saxophonist. In fact, he is one of the quartet’s founders. A former soloist with the United States Army Band, Kleinfeldt plays tenor sax for the group. His bandmates include Reginald Jackson on soprano; James Steele on alto; and Rick Parrell on baritone. Kleinfeldt was only too happy to fill out our WSaxQ holdings once I supplied him with a street address. Not long after the shipment arrived and I started sampling it, I began to understand one of the group’s primary frustrations: listeners have so strongly associated the saxophone with jazz that they can’t imagine it playing anything else. The thinking is so ingrained that when people hear a fine performance of something that is not jazz (basically everything that Kleinfeldt and his colleagues play), they can’t believe they’re hearing saxophones. In certain cases, such as the quartet’s recording of the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, by Bach, I had a little trouble myself. I kept thinking that their splendid sound, reverberating through Washington Immanuel Presbyterian Church, was coming from an organ. The quartet pushes boundaries not only of genre, but also of time. Looking Bach, their most recent release, features music written by Thoinot Arbeau nearly half a millennium ago. Devotees of the “period instrument” approach might find it a daring program choice. After all, the saxophone has only been around since 1840. Yet in this context, where Arbeau’s early theme is juxtaposed with Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite (a modern work that incorporates it), the ensemble takes authenticity to the next level. For many listeners, this release will be a revelation—a discovery just as thrilling, but not nearly as overdue as the one I made when I first heard the Washington Saxophone Quartet on my radio.