Murmurs of Motion - for SSAA saxophone quartet. Premiered, commissioned, and recorded by the ~Nois Saxophone Quartet in November 2021.
Murmurs of Motion comes out of a soprano saxophone solo I wrote in 2020, Still Fields. When writing the solo I was fascinated by the lyrical and melodic potential of saxophone multiphonics, and an initial thought for this piece was how I can take the melodic writing from Still Fields and turn it into a four-voice texture. As I was starting to work on this piece, I also realized though that I wasn’t just fascinated by the captivating and fragile tone quality and lyricism that these sounds had; I was also drawn to the inner life of these sounds - the delicateness, occasional breathiness, microtones, or sonic instability. A long held multiphonic isn’t just a static chord; I’m drawn to the subtle shifts and slight variances that happen within the sound. In a way, to me a single held multphonic sounds closer to a fast, active texture than to a drone; this piece tries to create an experience based around the activated inner life of the multiphonics.