SMOOTH FAT NASTY ALBUM - release December 8 2021
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MASTER RECORDING

Stockholm Saxophone Quartet records portrait album of “gritty, colorful” composer Peterson

European Gramophone is proud to announce the world-wide release of Smooth Fat Nasty, a new album showcasing the complete saxophone works of composer Matthew Peterson. Recorded by Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, Linn Persson, and Kristin Uglar at Duvbo Kyrka and European Gramophone Studios under the direction of the world-famous trombonist, conductor, composer and tonmeister Christian Lindberg, the recording is set to release worldwide both physically and on all digital streaming services Wednesday, December 8 2021.

“Gritty, colorful, often profane and clearly true to life” (Opera News), composer Matthew Peterson wrote all five works on this album for members of the world-renowned Stockholm Saxophone Quartet over a period of less than four years: from the eponymous Smooth Fat Nasty for baritone saxophone (2017) to Lament for Sven-David Sandström for saxophone quartet (2021). These works have since been performed dozens of times from Canada to South Africa. The longest work on the album, Dance Party Playlist was commissioned in 2019 to celebrate Stockholm Saxophone Quartet’s 50th anniversary. With different movements for each of the quartet’s five decades of existence, it’s a mashup of the baroque partita with progressions and rhythms lifted from dance hits.

Featuring virtuosic and emotive performances by the members of Stockholm Saxophone Quartet - Matias Karlsen Bjørnstad, Jörgen Pettersson, Theo Hillborg and Linn Persson, who performs two solo works - as well as a cameo by Kristin Uglar, this forty-five minute album was recorded by European Gramophone over four intense sessions, most memorably at European Gramophone Studios on the Valudden coast during a February 2021 storm on the Baltic Sea. Funding to produce this recording and commission Dance Party Playlist was provided by Kulturrådet, the Swedish Arts Council.

The score and performance materials for the works on this album are available from Swedish Music Information Center (Svensk Musik) at https://www.svenskmusik.org/en For more information please contact Matthew Peterson.

CONTACT:
Per Egland, European Gramophone europeangramophone @ gmail.com (+46) 73 832 8930
Matthew Peterson, matthewkennethpeterson @ gmail.com (+46) 70 579 0550
Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, stockholmsax @ gmail.com (+46) 70 393 35 51

CD LINER NOTES

COLLABORATING WITH THE RIGHT PEOPLE MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE.

In early 2017 the saxophonist Linn Persson and I were working together on the board of Samtida Musik, a concert producing non-profit in Stockholm, Sweden. Linn was putting together a solo program for Sound of Stockholm festival in November 2017, and on a whim, asked if I wouldn’t compose a piece for her. That work - Smooth fat nasty for baritone saxophone - set in motion a veritable avalanche of saxophone works over a four year period. Those five pieces comprise this album.

Smooth fat nasty (2017) was a watershed work for me as a composer, both musically and in terms of how I collaborate with musicians. In a stuffy practice-room in Stockholm, Linn showed me what she could do, and I captured her musical personality as video on my phone. The sounds she made and the way she played were captured in a work where nasty quasi-improvisatory outbursts alternate with smoothly expanding scalar patterns and fat bass-line ostinato grooves: the baritone saxophone in dialogue with itself, breaking across the registers to create multiple lines of funky counterpoint.

The success of the world-premiere at Sound of Stockholm and dozens of later performances around Sweden and the world led to new and immediate opportunities, like an encore duo for Linn and Kristin Uglar. Vingar, Virvlar (2018) for soprano and tenor saxophone was conceived in Kristin’s office, when I saw a cardboard moving box with a silhouette of two swans printed on it. Migratory waterfowl like swans and geese with ride one another’s tailwinds, eventually switching positions midair in synchronized aerial teamwork. The resultant piece is a tapestry of hocketed patterns undergoing various canonic treatments, saxophones switching places, soaring over and under.

In January 2020, shortly before the Covid-19 outbreak shut down the performing arts for a year-and-a-half, I met with Stockholm Saxophone Quartet and Florian Benfer, the conductor of Gustaf Sjökvists Chamber Choir to discuss a work commissioned for a March 2020 concert in honor of my late teacher, Sven-David Sandström. While that premiere was cancelled, the plaintive chaconne that opens the piece became the starting point for a new work for saxophone quartet, Lament for Sven-David Sandström.  

In October 2019, Stockholm Saxophone Quartet celebrated fifty years of existence with a concert at Stockholms Konserthus: fifty years commissioning, performing, and advocating on behalf of, new music, in Sweden and around the world. It was a tremendous honor that I was commissioned with funding from Kulturrådet to compose a work celebrating their legacy. I put a great deal of thought into the kind of work I would compose for an ensemble characterized by a joyously curious approach to new repertoire, fearless music-making, and great generosity of spirit. The Baroque partita or dance suite provided in my view the ideal medium: a modular work of dances in different tempos and rhythmic feels, a playground for composers of the time to showcase virtuosic writing for instruments. Dance Party Playlist (2019) is a five-movement mashup of the partita’s rhythms and forms with pop conventions from each decade of the quartet’s existence. The result? Sophisticated, virtuosic musical kitsch. A funk & disco allemande with layered 16th note grooves and catchy syncopated tunes. A moto perpetuo courante juxtaposing  post-minimalistic textures with harmonies and rhythms from alternative-rock. An homage to Prince that begins as a tender sarabande then dances all the way to an over-the-top purple climax. A hiphop and EDM inspired gigue interrupted by ferocious multiphonics. And as a finale, a graceful R&B bouree of cluster-chords and pregnant pauses. Put all together, a playlist for Stockholm Saxophone Quartet’s birthday party.

While putting the finishing touches on Dance Party Playlist, Per Egland and I were beginning the process of mixing and mastering my opera Voir Dire, which in 2020 would be my first release in collaboration with EUROPEAN GRAMOPHONE. Owned and operated by composer Per Egland and the world-famous trombonist, conductor and composer Christian Lindberg, EG is a classical label that - intentionally or not - has a sort of a punk-mentality, a lean-and-mean label hell-bent on changing how classical music is recorded and distributed. Working with them has been rewarding and I am grateful for Christian and Per’s expertise, hard-work and artistry. The Covid pandemic, while devastating, provided us time to focus on this recording. A particular highlight was the intense two-day recording session with Stockholm Saxophone Quartet at European Gramophone Studios that Christian built just a stone’s throw from the Baltic Sea. Twice postponed by outbreaks of Covid in the quartet, we finally were able to record - in the middle of the year’s fiercest storm, winds, snow, rain and even waves battering the coast and our little studio! 

An album whose genesis began with a collaboration with Linn Persson, ends with the second solo I composed for her. Linn’s interest in the dance-rhythms of Scandinavian fiddle music led me to compose a halling for alto saxophone, The Baddest Girl on the Mountain. Originating in the mountainous Hallingdal region of Norway, this courtship dance was traditionally a highly acrobatic spinning and leaping display of a young man’s fitness. Here, it is a breathless virtuosic showcase for Linn, where the alto saxophone becomes a sort of mouth-harp on steroids. 

- MATTHEW PETERSON
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The composer Matthew Peterson (b. 1984) lives in Dalarna, Sweden. A musical adventurer of great breadth and sensitivity, his music has been commissioned and performed around the world by leading ensembles including the Minnesota Orchestra, Swedish Radio Choir, Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and Eric Ericsons Chamber Choir. 

PRESS FOR Matthew Peterson

“Startlingly immediate and journalistic, as gripping as a great feature story, and made memorable by the depth and texture of the music”
-The Wall Street Journal

“Darkly brilliant”
-Classical Review

“Gritty, colorful, often profane and clearly true-to-life”
-Opera News

“Snorting with life and power”
-Sundsvalls Tidning

Smooth Fat Nasty - available December 8 2021 wherever music can be streamed

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