Tel Aviv Museum hosts saxophone quartet in dynamic music-art fusion

The Tel Aviv Saxophone Quartet graced an intimate audience at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art on Tuesday night with a delightfully quirky program ranging from Kurt Weill to the young Israeli composer Maayan James.

It was the first of a special concert series organized by Asaf Maoz called Talk. Art. Music., where chamber music dovetails with illuminating conversation. In this installment, Maoz talked with the museum’s chief curator, Mira Lapinsky, on the theme of wordless storytelling, affinities between music and art, and the ingredients of dynamic curation. 

The quartet quickly warmed up a cozy Kaufman Hall with The Dolphins by Pierre Vellones, full of expressive rubato and sensual proto-bebop harmonies. The four saxophones kept chugging along with Bach’s well-loved Italian Concerto BWV 971, energizing the timeless baroque voice-leading with satisfying, velvety bass tones.

Bach fed into a conversation about structure, in which Lapinsky noted the importance of architectural sensitivity in creating an experience at the art museum, one which ideally causes the visitor to linger and ponder. 

Franco Donatoni’s Rasch was a pleasant surprise – the late Italian composer of postwar ultra-modernist leanings is not often thought of for the saxophone quartet idiom. But Rasch’s witty musical banter drew the already attentive audience inward even more over the course of its quick vignettes, and the enigmatic, fluttery ending elicited some precious oohs and ahs. 

The saxophone as Weill's emblem

Highlights from The Threepenny Opera arranged from Kurt Weill’s 1928 landmark collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, were especially memorable with its irresistible mélange of fox trot and tango currents.

The saxophone, ample in Weill’s original score, became something of an emblem of the composer’s firebrand modernism in late twenties Weimar. The arranged suite, therefore, made for a delectable distillation of the sassy, countercultural quality so germane to Weill, and the ensemble relished it with every silky turn, glide, and portamento. 

The finale was quartet member Maayan James’s own work, El Ghiza, named after his father’s old neighborhood in Cairo. A lament bass converged with intoxicating, irregular rhythms as chromatic melisma kept weaving in and out of zesty dissonances.

The piece showed off the best yet of the ensemble’s musicality as they breathed together through runs and sweeps, landing together at the beginning of each intriguing loop.

The Tel Aviv Saxophone Quartet, founded in 2005, is one of Israel’s finest contemporary music ensembles, frequently commissioning new works and revitalizing old ones. Tuesday’s concert was also an excellent example of what the Tel Aviv Museum of Art concerts are all about, being thought-provoking and relevant for all ages and tastes.

Talks with a photojournalist, an illustrator, and a neuroscientist are upcoming in this eclectic series running through early March. Maoz’s sharp musical programming will be difficult to pass up here with classical mainstays and novelties alike from Caroline Shaw, Maya Belsitzman, and Matan Ephrat.