For those unaware, Wayne Alpern is a New York City composer, arranger, and scholar who integrates popular and jazz idioms with classical techniques and repertoire to create a sophisticated contemporary style of cross-genre, or even post-genre music.

After years of composing complex new music, he embraced his personal history and indigenous musical culture and fused them with his classical background and training.

His work includes numerous jazz arrangements, string quartets, woodwind and brass quintets, mixed ensembles, pieces for string orchestra, and several piano works.

On this brand new release, Saxology, Alpern has arranged a program of mostly jazz standards for the New York Saxophone Quartet.

1. All the Things You Are
2. Anthropology
3. Do Re Mi
4. Fascinating Rhythm
5. Hide Your Love Away
6. It Never Entered My Mind
7. Joy Spring
8. Lady Is a Tramp
9. Little Darlin’
10. Lonely Goatherd
11. Moten Swing
12. My Foolish Heart
13. Nessun Dorma
14. People
15. Rocker
16. Turn Out the Stars
17. Two Sleepy People
18. When I’m Sixty-Four

This dutiful, and richly complex new recording opens on the delightfully perky pop bounce of All the Things You Are and the melodic dance floor swing of Anthropology and then serves to bring us the melodically-beautiful Do Re Mi, the euphorically strident Fascinating Rhythm, the ardent, yet soothing love ballad Hide Your Love Away, the quietly jovial It Never Entered My Mind, and then come the aptly-named Joy Spring, the bubbly Lady Is a Tramp and the sax-led, jazz-pop mastery of Little Darlin’.

Up next is one of my own favorites, the sombre, yet impassioned Lonely Goatherd and the joyous, and again, aptly-named Moten Swing, and they are in turn backed by the languishing My Foolish Heart, the quite stunning Nessun Dorma, and then come the laid low ambiance of People, the impetuous Rocker, the yearning within Turn Out the Stars, the album rounding out on the mid-tempo saunter within Two Sleepy People, closing on a mighty fine, jaunty hipsway rendition of When I’m Sixty-Four.

New York Saxophone Quartet:
Steve Kenyon – soprano saxophone, Todd Groves – alto saxophone, Dave Noland – tenor saxophone, John Winder – baritone saxophone. Wayne Alpern – arranger.

Alpern’s innovative compositions, recompositions, and rearrangements have been performed and recorded by distinguished artists from diverse musical traditions. A native of Detroit immersed in the Motown sound, he studied at Oberlin College, University of Michigan, Yale University, and City University of New York, with additional work at Harvard, Juilliard, Wesleyan, and University of Pennsylvania.

His musical scholarship and theoretical expertise focuses on Schenkerian analysis and 20th-century music. He holds a law degree from Yale Law School and practiced civil litigation for nearly twenty years. He taught at Mannes College of Music, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, and Cardozo Law School, worked at General Music Publishing, United Artists Music Publishing, and was Steve Reich’s editor.

He is President and owner of Henri Elkan Music Publishing, Inc. and a lifetime member of the Society for Music Theory and American Musicological Society.

www.waynealpern.com