Neither Proud Nor Ashamed: New Music for Saxophone
When Randall Hall puts a sax to his lips, engages fingers and lungs, and fires up the laptop, it seems like he is driving helter-skelter towards the Classical music of the 22nd century. (After all, why wait?)
The six composers featured on his new CD, “Neither Proud, Nor Ashamed”, all write like there’s no tomorrow. You can feel the acceleration as the G-forces kick in and Hall takes the corners like a virtuoso. Composer heavyweights Luciano Berio and Christian Lauba join newcomers to the speedway, Kevin Ernste, Jonathan Kirk, Nicolas Scherzinger and Hall himself.
The music uses all the sounds ordinary sax music leaves out. It pushes the limits of what a vibrating reed (and ears) can do; it digs deep into the pre-verbal part of our minds awakening some forgotten archaic memory; it evokes the sound of the unconscious, or the creation of the world, or the meltdown of the atom. Who knows? Pride and shame not included.
