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Bernard Rands's PRISM (Memo 6b) Released on PRISM Quartet's Paradigm Lost

Sep. 01, 2017

Bernard Rands's <em>PRISM (Memo 6b)</em> Released on PRISM Quartet's <em>Paradigm Lost</em>

The premiere recording of Bernard Rands’s PRISM (Memo 6b) is released this month as part of the award-winning PRISM Saxophone Quartet’s latest album, Paradigm Lost. The album, which also features new recordings of works by Lee Hyla, John Adams, David Rakowski, Chen Yi and Augusta Read Thomas, is released on the ensemble’s own label XAS Records on September 22.

Rands’s PRISM (Memo 6b) was commissioned by the New York State Council on the Arts for the PRISM Quartet, who gave its premiere in Philadelphia in 2008. The work is part of Rands’s series of “Memo” pieces (and directly related to his Memo 6 for solo alto saxophone), which were composed between 1971 and 2008. In his liner notes for the album, John Schaefer writes that Rands’s quartet is “full of quicksilver changes of mood and texture ... PRISM (Memo 6b) is a reminder of why we use the verb “to play” when we talk about making music.”

View the score for PRISM (Memo 6b), below:


Also this month, Chicago's WFMT Radio has featured Rands in a "Composer Spotlight" as part of its Relevant Tones radio program. Rands discusses his career and compositional output with host Seth Boustead, with numerous recordings of Rands's works throughout the program. Listen to the complete Relevant Tones program here.

For more information on Bernard Rands, visit schott-music.com.

Bernard Rands
PRISM (Memo 6b) (2008)
for saxophone quartet
12’

Memo 6 (1998)
for solo alto saxophone
9'

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