Millions Will Die!

I saw some live music today. It was a saxophone quartet representing Musiqa, a composer-lead company here in Houston. The quartet consisted of Dan Gelok on soprano sax, Mas Sugihara on alto sax, Seth McAdow on tenor sax, and Evan Whitner on baritone sax.

Mas Sugihara is on the left and Dan Gelok is on the right.

It was a mild evening but very humid because it had rained earlier. The sun was setting as the ensemble played.

The second to last piece they played was a composition in five short movements called Mark Flood Miniature by composer Joel Love. The title of this postrefers to the third movement, named after a Mark Flood piece that was on the wall during his big 2016 solo show, Gratest Hits. That movement was very short, consisting of blurted out dissonant chords.

That’s the whole ensemble. You can see that the sun had set by then.

The composer, Joel Love, has many of his compositions on his website. Live performances have been videoed. Below is a performance of Mark Flood Miniatures at the opening of Mark Flood: Gratest Hits at the Contemporary Arts Museum in 2016. The ensemble that performed that night is identical to the one that played tonight except that the tenor sax was played by Matt Singleterry instead of Mas Sugihara.

What intrigued me about this piece was that it was inspired and dedicated to a visual artist. I am sure there are many such pieces, but I only know of one: Morton Feldman’s extremely long (four hours plus), meditative piece For Philip Guston, written after the painter’s death.

[Please consider supporting my work by becoming a patron.]