Donald Sinta Quartet: Ex Machina
Bright Shiny Things

With its sophomore album Ex Machina, The Donald Sinta Quartet makes a compelling case for itself as one of the leading saxophone quartets dedicated to new music. Framed by two Marc Mellits pieces, the collection features world premiere recordings by him and five others, Richard Chowenhill, Suby Raman, David Biedenbender, Mischa Zupko, and Chris Evan Hass. Opening with Mellits's seven-part title work, the release concludes with his oft-performed Black in its recording premiere for sax quartet. Virtuosic to the core, the DSQ executes all seven pieces with infectious energy and conviction, which makes the performances seem all the more definitive.

Formed in 2010 by Dan Graser (soprano), Zach Stern (alto), Joe Girard (tenor), and Danny Hawthorne (baritone), the quartet's named after University of Michigan Professor of Saxophone Donald Sinta, with whom the group members studied during their university tenure. In the years since, the quartet's received multiple awards and issued its debut album, Collider, in 2019. As much as the DSQ's a committed advocate of contemporary composers, its repertoire also includes transcriptions of pieces by Beethoven, Shostakovich, and others.

Opening the release with Mellits' Ex Machina was a smart move, considering that his creations are always spirited and teeming with ideas. With Hawthorne's honking figure initiating “Machine I (Let the Funk Out),” the R&B-inflected intro plays like some modern-day channeling of the World Saxophone Quartet. Mellits' general idea for the piece “was to express the beauty locked within machines, through seven different types of musical constructions,” and the delicate lyricism of “Machine III (Not Quite, but Almost Pensive; Sunflowers in Love)” shows such beauty being achieved. Whereas some parts are hushed and reflective, others are jubilant and motorik, and with one exception, all movements are in the two-minute range, which makes for a constantly stimulating presentation.

In contrast to Mellits' rapidly shifting opener, Chowenhill's In Solitude I Sit stretches its meditative arms for eleven, tension-inducing minutes, the DSQ here patiently layering long single-note tones into microtonal clusters for seconds at a time, the result musically analogous to the experience of time-suspension that occurs during visits to places of worship. Longer still at fourteen minutes, Raman's Mirapakaya instantiates the composer's desire to write “the spiciest music I could think of,” an idea prompted by a record-cold January that inspired him to keep warm by eating spicy Indian peppers (mirapakaya) and composing. A study in perpetual motion, the Carnatic music-influenced setting is one of the album's most rhythmically driven, the players at one point punctuating the material with handclaps. The DSQ essays the fast twists and turns of Raman's piece impressively, the performance akin to four kayakers navigating safe passage down a turbulent river. Quantum Shift shares with Raman's the demand it places on the virtuosity of the quartet members, Zupko's eight-minute piece rooted in a single, three-note cell that engenders lightning-fast exchanges between the saxophonists.

For the three-movement Cerulean, Biedenbender drew for inspiration from his experiences as a new parent, “Sirens” suggesting in the swell of its wave-like oscillations the embryonic development of human life, the central “Lullaby” initially tender but then ecstatic, and “Goof Groove” effective in evoking the careening dance of a four-year-old. Hass's dynamic Volcanic Ash tickles the ear by infusing rhythmic intensity and arpeggios with melismatic gestures drawn from Middle Eastern music, though it's as memorable for the lovely chorale at its centre. Originally composed for two amplified bass clarinets, Mellits' Black caps the release with the non-stop roar of rapidly pumping notes, the piston-like effect ostensibly serving to establish a connecting line from album's end to its beginning.

At seventy-seven minutes, the recording's long (which suggests that the better format for Ex Machina would be double-LP more than CD), but the quality level is never less than high, and in encompassing so many different stylistic moods, the works reveal the many shadings of which the group's capable and its ability to meet the works' myriad challenges. The strong impression established by the recording would perhaps be bolstered by seeing the quartet live, given that the DSQ apparently performs entirely from memory.

March 2020