Myriad Saxophone Quartet at TMEA

David Maslanka was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1943. He attended the Oberlin College Conservatory where he studied composition with Joseph Wood. He spent a year at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and did masters and doctoral study in composition at Michigan State University where his principal teacher was H. Owen Reed.

Maslanka’s music for winds has become especially well known. Among his more than 150 works are over 50 pieces for wind ensemble, including eight symphonies, seventeen concertos, a Mass, and many concert pieces. His chamber music includes four wind quintets, five saxophone quartets, and many works for solo instrument and piano. In addition, he has written a variety of orchestral and choral pieces.

David Maslanka’s compositions are published by Maslanka Press, Carl Fischer, Kjos Music, Marimba Productions, and OU Percussion Press. They have been recorded on Albany, Reference Recordings, BIS (Sweden), Naxos, Cambria, CRI, Mark, Novisse, AUR, Cafua (Japan), Brain Music (Japan), Barking Dog, and Klavier labels. He served on the faculties of the State University of New York at Geneseo, Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, and Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York, and was a freelance composer in Missoula, Montana from 1990 until his death in 2017. 

Visit: https://www.davidmaslanka.com

Per David Maslanka’s personal program notes:
A recitation book is a collection of writings, often of a sacred nature, used for readings by a community. The music of this piece draws on old sources for each movement – Bach Chorales, a Gesualdo madrigal, Gregorian Chant. A number of old variation techniques are employed throughout the piece. Recitation Book was composed for, premiered, and first recorded by, the Masato Kumoi Saxophone Quartet of Tokyo.

I have loved Italian madrigals since my student days. Recitation Book for saxophone quartet feels something like a madrigal collection, but with a grand finale. My approach to composing is vocal, and the singing quality of saxophones is one of their fine strengths. The movements in this piece are relatively brief and intimate songs.

Much of my recent music draws its inspiration from the distant past. An old melody pushes open a door in my mind and a parallel world or dream makes its way out.

Each piece in this set found its inspiration in that way. The title, “Recitation Book,” implies a set of lessons. I don’t want to say explicitly what each “lesson” means, but the titles of the pieces circle around the theme of death, which for me implies the passing of the old, and the coming of the new.

I have not only quoted a number of old melodies in Recitation Book, but two whole brief pieces as well. This first is J.S. Bach’s four-part chorale Jesu, meine Freude, and the second is an arrangement for the four saxophones of the five-voiced madrigal Ecco, morirò dunque by Gesualdo di Venosa.

Kevin Day is an award-winning, multi-disciplinary composer, jazz pianist and conductor based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Internationally acclaimed as one of the world’s leading musical voices, his work is known as a vibrant exploration of diverse musical traditions from contemporary classical, cinematic, jazz, R&B, Soul and more. A unique voice in the world of classical music, Dr. Day takes inspiration from a broad range of sources, including romanticism, late 20th century music, jazz fusion, and gospel. Across all areas, his work explores the complex interplay of rhythm, texture, and melody across genres.

He burst onto the musical scene in 2018 with his Concerto for Euphonium, which has since gone on to become a Classic FM sensation and has been performed by the United States Marine Band. Since then, some of the world’s top instrumental soloists, wind bands, chamber ensembles and symphony orchestras have commissioned and performed his works, including the Cincinnati Opera; Cincinnati, Houston and  Fort Worth Symphony Orchestras; New Jersey Symphony; Las Vegas Philharmonic; Dallas Winds; Nu Deco Ensemble; United States Coast Guard Band; Boston Brass; Latitude 49; Lincoln Trio; Capitol Quartet; Tesla Quartet; Castle of Our Skins; Puerto Rican Trombone Ensemble; Sheffield Chamber Players and many others throughout the United States, Canada, Austria, Taiwan, South Africa, Australia and Japan. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the BMI Composer Award, 3rd Prize of the Alexander Zemlinsky Prize in Chamber Music Composition, the ITEA Harvey Phillips Award for Excellence in Composition, a Copland House Residency Award, the MacDowell Fellowship for Music Composition, the TCU Alumni Outstanding Young Professional Award, a three-time ASCAP Morton Gould Finalist, a finalist for the ABA Sousa-Oswald Award, a finalist twice for the NBA Revelli Award, and many more. He was also selected as the 3rd Prize Winner of the New Classics International Competition for Young Composers at the Moscow Conservatory. In 2025, he was inducted into the Texas Christian University (TCU) Band of Fame.

Dr. Day’s original opera, Lalovavi: An Afrofuturist Opera, will premiere at the Cincinnati Opera in 2026 as the lead work in its ground-breaking new Black Opera Project. The work is the first of three commissioned by the Cincinnati Opera as part of its initiative to engage Black creators in developing new works celebrating Black stories. As part of the project, Dr. Day is collaborating with director Kimille Howard and librettist Tifara Brown, who’s recognized as one of the United States’ leading performance poets. Other recent works include his acclaimed Concerto for Wind Ensemble and Echoes (Piano Trio No. 4), as well as Ignition, commissioned by the Boston Symphony Low Brass and “Unquiet Waters”, commissioned by Jordan VanHemert.

Dr. Day currently works as Artist Teacher in Residence, Composition at the Keys Conservatory at Pinecrest Academy Sloan Campus in Henderson, Nevada. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Performance from Texas Christian University, a Master of Music degree in Composition from the University of Georgia, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Composition from the University of Miami Frost School of Music. He has studied composition with Dorothy Hindman, Charles Norman Mason, Peter Van Zandt Lane, Emily Koh, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Neil Anderson-Himmelspach. He is an alumnus of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, an honorary member of the National Chapter of Tau Beta Sigma, and an honorary member of the National Chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi. 

Visit: https://www.kevindaymusic.com

Kevin Day is the former Executive Director of the Millennium Composers Initiative (MCI), an organization that supports early-career composers worldwide through networking and performance opportunities. In his thoughts regarding Converging Spectrums, he said:

"The idea to write this new piece for saxophone quartet just suddenly came to me one day. Often times, inspiration just comes to me at random moments and this piece was no exception. Having written for saxophone quartet in the past, it was nice to write for an instrumentation again that I was familiar with.

The concept for Converging Spectrums was the idea of having different spectrums of color and sound combine, twist, change, and ultimately, converge. There are many things you can do with saxophones to change the color, and so that was something I wanted to explore with this piece. I wanted to push myself to see how I could write for this concept and effectively communicate what I was hearing in my head.

A big challenge for this piece was finishing the entire thing. I was working on two different commissions at the same time (a concerto and a high school band piece), and so it was hard for me to focus on writing the other movements without this saxophone quartet work sounding like the other two pieces. With this piece, however, I wanted the audience to just listen to how its musical ideas weave in and out, and how its melodic ideas change shape.

•Pedro Iturralde is considered one of the major figures of Spanish jazz. He is also renowned as a composer and performer of classical repertoire for saxophone. Born in Falces (Navarra) in 1929, Iturralde learned music with his father and at the age of 9 he started playing the saxophone and clarinet in the Falces municipal band. Later he studied saxophone, clarinet, piano, violin, guitar and harmony at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid, where he taught from 1978 until his retirement in 1994.

At the age of 18, he made his first tour abroad as a jazz musician and on his return to Spain, he obtained a higher degree in saxophone. At the age of 20 he composed his most famous piece: La Pequeña Czarda, for saxophone and piano.

Iturralde was the first to introduce the flamenco guitar into jazz and thus contributed to the birth of what would be called "flamenco jazz". He recorded two albums entitled Jazz Flamenco vol.1 and 2. As a classical saxophonist, he frequently performed with the National Orchestra of Spain and the Symphony Orchestra of the Spanish Radio and Television. Pedro Iturralde passed away in 2020. He leaves behind beautiful pieces that will remain in the repertoire.

Visit the Henri Selmer Paris website to learn more about Pedro Iturralde and his vast contributions to the saxophone.

John Mackey (he/him) has written for orchestras (Brooklyn Philharmonic, New York Youth Symphony), theater (Dallas Theater Center), and extensively for dance (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Parsons Dance Company, New York City Ballet), but the majority of his work for the past decade has been for wind ensembles (the fancy name for concert bands), and his band catalog now receives annual performances numbering in the thousands.

Recent commissions include works for the BBC Singers, the Dallas Wind Symphony, military, high school, middle school, and university bands across America and Japan, and concertos for Joseph Alessi (principal trombone, New York Philharmonic), Christopher Martin (principal trumpet, New York Philharmonic), and Julian Bliss (international clarinet soloist). In 2014, he became the youngest composer ever inducted into the American Bandmasters Association. In 2018, he received the Wladimir & Rhoda Lakond Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He resides in New York City, with his spouse, A. E. Jaques, a philosopher who works on the ethics of artificial intelligence for MIT, and also titles all of his pieces; and their cats, Noodle and Bloop.

Visit: https://www.johnmackey.com

Per John Mackey’s personal program notes:
“Wrong-Mountain Stomp” tells the story of Jenny, a young girl who has spent her whole life growing up in the hills of Appalachia. Jenny has tired of her life there, and she decides to move to “bigger mountains,” specifically, the mountains of Vail, Colorado. (The work was commissioned by the Vail Valley Music Festival.) In the first movement, arranged here for saxophone quartet, “Mama, I’m Leavin’,” Jenny gets in a fight with her mama and, well, leaves, slamming the door on her way out.

The Myriad Quartet is an undergraduate saxophone quartet at the University of North Texas composed of music education majors Trinity Bahng, Jordan Calhoun, Daniel Jipster, and Austin Orr. Founded in 2023, the ensemble has performed in numerous settings both on campus and throughout the greater community. This ensemble was recently selected to perform at the 2026 Texas Music Educators Association Conference in San Antonio, Texas, and is proud to represent the UNT College of Music.

The University of North Texas College of Music is the largest public university music program in the United States and one of the most globally respected. Faculty and staff include internationally acclaimed artists and scholars in composition, conducting, ethnomusicology, jazz studies, music education, music business, music history, music theory, commercial music and performance. The college presents more than 700 music events annually. Students perform in more than 70 ensembles in eight campus venues and can be viewed worldwide via free superior quality live streaming. UNT music alumni can be found around the world in impressive, award-winning careers across a wide range of music professions. Our current faculty members include Guggenheim Fellows, Fulbright Fellows, an Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, a Charles Ives Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Van Cliburn International Piano Competition Gold Medalist, Emmy, Grammy, Latin Grammy, Oscar and Tony nominees and Grammy and Latin Grammy Award winners. Our students come from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and more than 40 countries.

The mission of the UNT College of Music is to serve our diverse musical culture with excellence, integrity and imagination. The vision of the UNT College of Music is to provide leadership, artistry and expertise to every facet of the music profession.

Ranked a Tier One research institution by the Carnegie Classification, UNT is one of the largest public research universities in the United States with more than 46,000 students who push creative boundaries and graduate with credentials of value so they can become tomorrow’s leaders. UNT is recognized as a Minority-Serving and Hispanic-Serving Institution, reflecting the population of Texas. UNT students earned nearly 13,000 degrees last year in 240 degree programs, many nationally and internationally recognized. With a focus on academic excellence and graduating career-ready students, UNT has served as a catalyst for creativity since its founding in 1890, continually fueling progress, entrepreneurship and innovation for the North Texas region, the state — and beyond.

The UNT community is guided by five shared values — Courageous Integrity, Be Curious, We Care, Better Together and Show Your Fire.