Kebyart Ensemble
MIXTUR 2021
Program
Pere Méndez – sax. soprano
Víctor Serra – sax. alt
Robert Seara – sax. tenor
Daniel Miguel – sax. baríton
information
Born in Barcelona, Kebyart is one of the most promising ensembles of the current music scene. These four talented musicians share an endless passion for chamber music and wish to bring fresh air in the way classical music is communicated. Their endeavour to transform their performances into a unique experience results in an explosive and vibrant staging, which has been praised by audiences and specialized critics. The distinctive signature of Kebyart is revealed in a creative and open approach to the repertoire, which goes in three directions: the original literature, the commitment with nowadays music and their own arrangements of wide variety styles.
In the middle of the 19th century, a new musical instrument was born from the mind and hands of the eccentric Belgian inventor Adolphe Sax. Since that time, the saxophone has enjoyed an unstoppable expansion that extends into the 21st century. Today, this success translates into a strong interest on the part of contemporary composers.
With less than a decade of existence, works such as those of Georg Friedrich Haas and Péter Eötvös have already become classics of literature for saxophone quartet, despite starting from distant aesthetic conceptions. In the case of Haas, the harmonic spectrum of sound is the foundation upon which the Austrian musician builds a lush sound architecture. On the other hand, Eötvös is part of the Hungarian musical tradition, always linked to speech and language, in a piece articulated in two scenes, in the manner of a theatrical text:
“I had the idea of writing this piece during an essay by theatre director Klaus Michael Grüber that I attended in Berlin. Three actors were rehearsing a scene of Kleist. In the end, Grüber said: «now again, but different». The text was identical but the interpretation was completely different and had almost nothing in common with the previous version”. Thus, the two musical scenes of the work are presented in completely different characters although they use the same material.
The commission of the Mixtur Festival to Maria de Alvear together with the miniatures written by the students of the composition workshop complete a program that shows the enormous potential of the formation of the saxophone quartet as a musical speaker of the 21st century.