We’re super excited to bring you a whole boat-load of sax and percussion for our next event Blue Notes and Other Clashes. We’re featuring Austin’s own high-voltage purveyors of percussion Kraken Quartet, the ever-impressive Austin Saxophone Ensemble, and Steve Mackey’s scintillating Blue Notes and Other Clashes performed by eight of Austin’s most talented young musicians. It’s all going down at one of Austin’s tastiest venues for live music, 4th Tap Brewing Co-op.
A massive force of percussion and electronics, The Kraken Quartet is a genre-crossing group known for its highly energetic and engaging performances. Since their formation in 2012, the Austin-based band has been heralded for merging elements of minimalism, math-rock, indie, post-rock, electronica, and the avant-garde. Embracing this diverse sound, the group has shared the stage with a wide range of artists including So Percussion, Dirty Projectors, TTNG, Sandbox Percussion, Tim Feeney, Matthew Duvall, El Ten Eleven, and Elliot Cole.
ASE is Austin’s favorite band of 13 saxophonists, busting down barriers and creating new sounds worthy of the Live Music Capital of the World. Our sound is orchestral, experimental, lush, violent, delicate, expansive, precise, aggressive, sensitive, and everything in between. Our ears and hearts are open to all great music – whether it is the timeless classical warhorses of Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky or inventive and thrilling music written by some of Austin’s greatest living composers.
Fanciful, flowing, and fine; rough, rowdy, and raucous; elusive, effervescent, and enchanting; each movement a microcosm of color and light, Steven Mackey’s Blue Notes and Other Clashes (for sax quartet + percussion quartet) traverses terrains splendid and strange, wandering through wonders with joie de vivre and a splash of swagger. We dare you not to wiggle and dance in your seat.
The “Blue Notes Group” is comprised of 8 young professional musicians in the Austin area. Formed in spring of 2019 for the unified purpose of promoting Steven Mackey’s composition, Blue Notes and Other Clashes, the ensemble continues to perform the work regularly. Upcoming performances include an appearance with the University of Texas-Austin New Music Ensemble in October, as well as a performance at the Texas Music Educators Association Conference in 2020.
Doors open at 4:00pm
Austin Saxophone Ensemble at 5:00pm
Kraken Quartet at 6:00pm
Blue Notes and Other Clashes at 7:00pm
This project is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department.
We’re super stoked to be teaming up with our friends at COTFG to bring A Point on a Slow Curve to the Museum of Human Achievement this Jan/Feb. Written by Composer/violinist Dana Lyn, this work features Dana’s band Mother Octopus as well as Austin-based singers Leah Hollingshead, Keely Rhodes, Adrienne Pedrotti, and Page Stephens. This event will also be co-billed with a different Austin artist each night.