Strata by Laefer Quartet
“Whether the subject is geology, oceanography, meteorology, or sociology, a stratum is a layer that is distinguished in some way from the layers below and above it…”
Tim Rutherford-Johnson - on Strata.
The Laefer Quartet’s debut album, Strata, presents a body of previously unrecorded music which explores the different ways we interact, intertwine, and impose on the natural world around us. A collaborative ethos has formed a central part of the album's creation, which features six commissioned pieces alongside visual artworks based on a synaesthetic response to the music. The album guides listeners upwards across various ‘strata’: starting from the rumblings of the New York subway, moving through various natural, mechanical and political phenomena that form the stratum we, as humans, typically occupy, into the skies we fly through and the stars we gaze upon, before finally bursting into the ethereal and beyond, all the while exploring the varied and exciting sonic possibilities the saxophone quartet has to offer. Featuring works by Charlotte Harding, Michael Cryne, Benjamin Oliver, Clare Loveday, Anna Appleby, Denise Ondishko, and Howard Skempton, the album will be released on 1st March 2024 on the Coviello Contemporary label.
Tracklist
Credits
Recorded, Edited, Mixed and Mastered by Aaron Holloway-Nahum
Album and Track Artwork by Bekki Lamstaes & Joseph Spinoza
Produced with support from the Vaughan Williams Foundation
License
All rights reserved.
Widely regarded as one of the UK’s most exciting and dynamic saxophone quartets, the Laefer Quartet have been at the cutting edge of saxophone chamber music for over a decade. Through the performance of established works, transcriptions, and commissions the quartet seeks to celebrate the extraordinary versatility, virtuosity, and breadth which characterise the saxophone.