Fabulous performances by the Prism Saxophone Quartet in Philadelphia and NYC over the past couple of days. The quartet took on 15 premieres (!!!) in a pair of concerts at University of Pennsylvania, then reprised the 2nd of those two concert at the Tenri Cultural Institute in New York today. Marilyn Nonken joined the quartet for the first performances of my Stratigraphy. I was concerned that the textures of the piece seemed a little opaque after the first performance at Penn, but in a more congenial acoustic today at Tenri I felt more confident about the piece. Here are a few pictures. First, Prism and Marilyn with many composers – from left to right that’s Jay Reise, myself, Marc LeMay, Tim McAllister (soprano saxophone), Jacob Walls, Kai-Young Chan, Joshua Hey, Taimur Sullivan (baritone saxophone), Andrew Davis, Finola Merivale, Ben Hjertmann, Jane Lange, Marilyn Nonken (piano), Zachary Shemon (alto saxophone), Matt Levy (tenor saxophone). (To my regret, composers Anna Weesner, Kevin Laskey, and Kyle Bartlett didn’t get into the picture.)

Tenri Cultural Institute is on 13th between Sixth and Fifth in New York.

Anna did get into this shot – here’s the quartet along with Anna Weesner, speaking about her piece today at Tenri.