The Sinta Quartet often has the element of surprise on its side when it performs, says soprano saxophonist Dan Graser. Many audiences have never heard a concert by a classical saxophone quartet.
“They have heard the instrument in only one or two ways,” says Graser. “They’ve heard it in jazz or in an aggressive funk or pop style in commercial music.” But the quartet — Graser, Zach Stern on alto, Joe Girard on tenor, and Danny Hawthorne-Foss on baritone — has mastered an underrepresented genre. Though far less recognizable than the standard string quartet, the combination of four saxophones is not new: the earliest saxophone quartets were composed in the 1850s and ’60s.
The saxophone quartet has a distinguishing quality that string quartets don’t: an especially homogenous blend made possible because the members of the quartet play “four different lanes of an identical instrument,” says Graser. “It’s almost like having a big church organ but powered by four people at the same time.”
The quartet’s smooth sound doesn’t sacrifice dynamic and notational range — which is similar to a string quartet’s. The soprano saxophone is high and nimble, like a first violin; the alto and tenor saxophones play the denser, warmer rhythmic and harmonic parts usually given to second violin and viola; and Graser says the lowest note on the baritone saxophone is identical to the lowest note on the cello.
Graser has rearranged most of the group’s repertoire from string quartets. “What people might not expect,” he says, “is that most of the string quartet literature, if you just translate it for saxophone, actually sits very well.” He tries not to make concessions or adaptations if he can help it. “I want to give you what that person wrote, as they wrote it,” he says.
Arranging becomes more challenging “in the mid-20th century,” says Graser, “as composers started writing really specialized sound effects for string quartets — instrument-specific sounds.” A string-instrument technique called col legno (in English, “with the wood”) indicates the musician should play on the string with the wood side of the bow instead of with the horsehair. “That’s a sound we couldn’t really mimic,” says Graser. “But pizzicato, yep. We can do that with slap-tongue.”
And all the members of the quartet can “circular breathe,” a technique used by wind and brass musicians that involves inhaling through the nose at the same time as exhaling through the mouth into the instrument. Circular breathing means the musicians can play continuously, as a violinist might play a long series of notes without any pauses.
“I’ve gotten to a point where, when I listen to a string piece, I can start hearing it on saxophone,” says Graser. “I’m making the adaptation in my head.”
Graser also arranges traditional music for the quartet, tunes that often aren’t notated at all. This kind of aural arranging “hearkens back to my jazz side,” he says. “The folk tradition, Appalachian, Celtic — a lot of that is oral tradition. As a result, if you’re going to make a version for saxophone, you’ve got to do it by ear.”
Beethoven quartets work as well on saxophones as do Irish reels — a range not all brass and wind instruments can boast. There is a reason: when Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone in 1846, “He wanted an instrument that could function as a hybrid between the strings, the winds, and the brass,” says Graser. “It’s a woodwind instrument. It uses a reed, but it’s made out of brass.” It’s an instrument intended for blending. “If you play any of the big saxophone solos in an orchestra, for example,” says Graser, “even while you’re soloing, you’re also functioning as the glue between the winds or the winds plus another section. Rachmaninoff did that really well in his Symphonic Dances. The first movement has an alto saxophone solo. Clarinet weaves in and out, oboe weaves in and out, bassoon responds to that. And your melody is then taken up by the strings in the very next phrase.”
Despite the saxophone’s intended role, Graser admits it is best known as a solo instrument. Graser himself was in the second year of his doctoral studies, well on his way to a solo career, when the Sinta Quartet was formed in 2010. “I think the reasons why we kept with it are the same reasons you would get from somebody in a really good string quartet,” says Graser. “They’d say the best writing for them is for quartet. In our opinion, the best writing for saxophone is the chamber music.”
The quartet will make its Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival debut on July 25 with a free concert at the Salt Pond Visitor Center in Eastham. They’ll play a diverse program that includes a movement from one of Beethoven’s late string quartets, a set of reels, music by Bach, and “Ex Machina,” composed in 2017 by Marc Mellits: a piece written for saxophone quartet in seven movements.
The Sinta performs by memory, unusual among classical ensembles. “You’re out there without a safety net, in a way,” says Graser. Music stands are a physical barrier between audience and musician. By removing them, Graser says, the performance feels unusually interactive. “We talk to the audience between each piece. It’s a cliché, I know, but it feels like the performance is kind of a conversation. They’re watching a conversation among us, and we’re having a conversation with them.”
Performing from memory doesn’t make Graser especially nervous — the quartet makes sure to know the repertoire inside and out. But Graser remembers a moment before a performance when he was “physically shaking.” The quartet was performing at the Great Lakes Chamber Festival in Michigan as part of the Shouse Institute. The Institute’s program includes chamber music coaching for young groups by a well-established professional ensemble.
“That year it was the Emerson String Quartet,” says Graser. “We were playing Skostakovich’s eighth string quartet. And I had grown up listening to the Emerson’s recording of that piece. I’ve got all of their CDs. The prospect of playing that in front of them was quite daunting.” The Sinta performed the quartet for the Emerson at a public master class.
Graser beams as he finishes the story: “When we finished, violinist Philip Setzer’s first remark was, ‘You know, most of this actually works a lot better on saxophone than on strings.’ ”
Casual Sax: Four Play
The event: A concert by the Sinta Saxophone Quartet
The time: Tuesday, July 25, 7 p.m.
The place: National Seashore Salt Pond Visitor Center, 50 Nauset Road, Eastham
The cost: Free
