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Solo
2025
Saxophone
- Program Notes
- The sixth work in the Imaginary Beings series, Ornithopter's Dream is a baritone saxophone solo composition written for Masanori Oishi. In writing Ornithopter's Dream, I began by approaching the baritone saxophone not merely as an aerophone producing musical sounds via air, but as an ensemble of diverse sonic components: key mechanics, breaths through the tubes, vibration of the reeds, the tongue and lips as percussion, and more. Taken together, these sounds form something like a surreal machine. At some point, the image of Da Vinci's ornithopter—an imaginary aircraft that achieves flight by flapping mechanical wings like a bird—came to mind. I felt that the sonic world I was exploring in the baritone saxophone somehow matched with the steampunk impression I have always associated with the saxophone family. As we know, the wing mechanism of an ornithopter has proven far from ideal for building aircraft. I began to fantasize about what such a gigantic bird-like machine might think and dream. I imagined an ornithopter longing to be a bird, taking its brief, imperfect flights through the sky. The two movements of Ornithopter's Dream form a diptych that represents different facets of this imagined dream. The first movement, of flight and free fall, is a moto perpetuo that conjures the external struggle of the ornithopter as it fights against gravity to achieve flight. The second movement, steels' sky, depicts the internal world of the machine's yearning for the sky.
- Recording Notes
Recording from the world premiere of the work by Masanori Oishi on 5 September 2025 at the Takefu International Music Festival 2025
- Performer Credits
- Masanori Oishi