Carrie Koffman (review)

Carrie Koffman teaches at The Hartt School, University of Hartford, and this compact disc is the result of her efforts to discover and record repertoire written for saxophone by women composers. Koffman writes in her notes that she studied only one work written by a woman for saxophone in her student days, and she could count the number of works she had performed that were written by women on one hand until she began formulating this recording project. She discovered some of the pieces included here, commissioned others, arranged one piece, and had others arrange the rest, with the intention of raising awareness of what women have contributed and are contributing in the areas of composition and saxophone performance. Roshanne Etezady’s Glint (2007), a “fiendishly difficult showpiece for clarinet and alto saxophone” according to the composer, gets the proceedings off to an energetic start. Koffman is joined by clarinetist Alan Kay, who is on faculty at The Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, and Stony Brook University, and they both do a masterful job of alternating tone and timbre in rapid succession, switching from muted to bright and back again as they reel off their intertwining lines. Augusta Read Thomas originally composed Carillon Sky (2009) for solo violin and small ensemble, and later agreed to develop this version with solo saxophone, which Koffman premiered. The liner notes include what Thomas envisioned when stimulated to compose this music—a fantasized image “of a sky full of very soft tinkling and flickering bells as well as very clamorous pealing, ringing, resonant bells, through which one floats.” The ensemble, under the direction of Glen Adsit, Director of Bands and Associate Director of Instrumental Studies at The Hartt School, deftly crafts the sky of Thomas’s imagination, in which Koffman soars and explores. Koffman sounds as if she is enjoying the freedom to move through the sky as she pleases. This version of the piece seems a likely choice for being programmed by other saxophonists. The original version of Cindy McTee’s Timepiece was commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for its 100th Anniversary Season in 2000, but the version heard on this disc is one recast into a piece for electronics and solo saxophone by Kathryn Swanson-Ellis, another of Koffman’s colleagues at The Hartt School. Koffman’s performance is that of the human element couched within a soundscape produced by machines, although the machines in this case are firmly under the control of Swanson-Ellis. The percussive tick tocks that recur drive home a literal sense of the title, drawing attention to what every listener knows but perhaps forgets on occasion: music is a time-based art. Ben Toth, percussion professor at The Hartt School, joins Koffman in performing Shulamit Ran’s “Song and Dance” (2007), a work that has no words and no consistent pulse that would facilitate dancing of a social variety. Toth’s part is played primarily on mallet percussion instruments so he is able to contribute both rhythmic and melodic interplay to Koffman’s phrasing. Koffman plays both alto and soprano saxophones on the piece, and displays an impressive control over her vibrato, applying it to notes mid-phrase and then moving back into straight tones. The piece is episodic, without having defined movements. The motivic expressions include enough augmented second intervals to lend the work a Middle Eastern flavor. Marguerite Roesgen-Champion (1894–1976) was a Swiss harpsichordist, pianist, teacher, and composer, and her Concert no. 2 (1945) for saxophone, bassoon, and harpsichord, is the musical outlier in this collection of otherwise contemporary music. Koffman’s rationale for including it on this disc is that it is one of the few pieces she had played prior to undertaking her project. She is joined by two more fellow faculty members from The Hartt School— David Westfall on harpsichord, and Marc Goldberg on bassoon—with the harpsi-chord providing an icy and spiky contrast to the warm and smooth blend of bassoon and saxophone. The cumulative effect is delightfully disorienting, in terms of aurally locating the era of...