Photo: Nick Zoulek
Founded in 2016, Chicago-based saxophone quartet ~Nois has established itself as one of the most vital forces in contemporary chamber music. With hundreds of shows under their belt, they have gained widespread recognition for championing new music for saxophone, with an unwavering commitment to the commissioning of living composers, resulting in more than 120 world premieres to date. The quartet, made up of Julian Velasco, Natalia Warthen, Jordan Lulloff, and János Csontos, have announced the release of their new album What is ~Nois. Unlike traditional chamber recording models, the upcoming What is ~Nois was developed closely in the studio with composers Darian Donovan Thomas, Aeryn Jade Santillan, Francisco del Pino, and Travis Laplante, along with multi GRAMMY-Award-Winning producer/engineer Mike Tierney. By shaping the works directly in the studio, performers, composers, and producer were able to refine and capture what they considered the “most fully realized version of the pieces possible”.
What is ~Nois sprouted from early seeds. “You can make your music however you want to, you just have to be vulnerable enough to take that leap”, composer Darian Donovan Thomas shared with ~Nois’ Julian Velasco in 2023. As Lulloff explains, “We wanted to make something that we really liked while not being limited by the traditional perceptions of the relationships between composers and performers. This feeling really embodies the idea behind ~Nois…new music, new ideas, new sounds that all have the saxophone as a core part of it but it’s not solely a capital ‘S’ sax, capital ‘Q’, quartet record.”
The album closes with the three-movement suite ‘Running in a Field of Flowers’ by Travis Laplante, reflecting on a time in his life when “he was consciously more connected to the Earth through listening.” Velasco describes the suite as a love letter to the instrument, “eliciting sound worlds that only technicians of the instrument can fully understand and unlock.” The closing movement, ‘Searing Joy’, culminates in a soaring soprano saxophone solo, where the composer asked Velasco to “soar like a comet”. Utterly gorgeous and gripping, ‘Searing Joy’ is after your ears.
What is ~Nois is out on April 10th through New Amsterdam Records,
