Strange Lights (2019)

Commissioned by saxophonist Perry Roth

Duration 14 minutes

First Performance US Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium, 10 January 2020.

Program Note Strange Lights was commissioned by the Hartford-based saxophonist Perry Roth and completed in late 2019. The work runs roughly fourteen minutes in three (without pause) movements titled I, II, and III. With little experience writing for solo saxophone before this commission, I began my own creative process by thinking carefully about the character and color of the instrument, looking for points of entry for my own compositional interests. Early on, I become interested in the saxophone’s unique timbre and more specifically, the instrument’s ability to retain a warmth and richness while still delivering a brassy brilliance and brightness. This imagery inspired the title Strange Lights, coming from a realization that all of my expressive and textural interests with the instrument were directly analogous to light — warmth, brightness, radiation, flashing, color. In this way, the work is a “study” of these inclinations and the piece organized in nearly the same order that different “light” ideas occurred in my head, with the first movement structured around a melodic interest, the second structured around a rhythmic interest, and the third serving as a reflection or postlude. Program Note ©2020 Harriet Steinke.