Continuing and developing its 37-year mission of commissioning, performing and recording new music for saxophones, the Apollo Saxophone Quartet presents four new works from brilliant young composers (including Dani Howard, a Liverpool favourite following her prize-winning Concerto for Trombone, premiered by Peter Moore & the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra) that are premiering in its 2022-2023 season, before performing its own music in Journey Across the Impossible.

A regular international touring ensemble, the Apollo Saxophone Quartet(ASQ) has featured many times in live broadcasts on Classic FM and BBC radio and has released seven albums to date, as well as appearing on recordings by the likes of Michael Nyman, Michael Torke and Django Bates. The ASQ contribution to the repertoire of the saxophone quartet is immense, with commissioned works being a part of the now standard repertoire worldwide.

Past and present members of the Apollo Saxophone Quartet have composed the quirky Journey Across the Impossible scores, which have been set to an imaginative and often hilarious series of black and white films dating back to the early experimental days of film in the 1900s.

The ensemble sourced the films during a day at the British Film Institute in London, trawling through old filing cabinets and cupboards to uncover a mesmerising collection of short films, some of which had been untouched for years.

They feature some of the early techniques that were being used in silent film and include some of the great luminaries of the time such as Georges Méliès, who took the medium of film and pushed it into areas that it was never meant to go.

The music from many of these films, along with the group’s groundbreaking original scores written with poet Lemn Sissay (The Four Seasons) is recorded on the ASQ CD Word & Pictures.

“A unique virtuosic banquet” Classical Music Magazine

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Tickets: £18 (Concs. £16) + booking fee