Composer Debra Kaye's Works for Saxophone to be Performed in New York This Spring

Award-winning composer Debra Kaye's works And So It Begins and Dialogues with the Distant Mountains, featuring acclaimed saxophonist Javier Oviedo, will be performed in New York this spring. Kaye's writing process draws heavily on jazz and classical influences and she says. "I try to keep the intuitive connection in my music and capture the blink moment in listening for what comes next."

Her Dialogues with the Distant Mountains for saxophone and piano will be featured at the "Live Music by Living Composers" benefit concert for the Leschetizky Association at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 6 at the Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A West 13th Street in New York. Tickets are $20 and available at the door.

Oviedo and pianist Marcia Eckert, who recorded the work on Kaye's debut CD, And So It Begins, will perform the composition which was inspired by the expansive landscape of Northern California. The Atlanta Music Teachers Association commissioned the work. And So It Begins, produced by Grammy winning Judith Sherman, was recognized as "an album that will surely stand the test of time," and included on Ted Gioia's list of top 100 CDs.

In Dialogues with the Distant Mountains, as in many of her other compositions, jazz and classical influences interact freely. Sometimes the music swings, there is a bluesy solo that is thoroughly notated, but it allows the classical player to sound improvisational. Kaye says she is interested in blurring the edge between the feeling of time as experienced in written music and extemporaneous styles.

Her composition And So It Begins, a concerto for tenor saxophone and string orchestra, with Oviedo and the Classical Saxophone Orchestra under the direction of Jean-Pierre Schmitt will be featured on the Classical Saxophone Project concert on Thursday, June 1 at 7:30 p.m. at St. Peter's Church, 619 Lexington Avenue in New York. Tickets are $25 and available at the door.

Kaye has been hailed as "a unique voice in American music" for her "transcendent, witty, colorful and profound" works blending her deep classical roots with a wide range of influences including jazz, world music, folk, experimental improvisation, world events and sounds of daily life. With a catalogue of close to 50 works, chamber and orchestral music, art songs, choral and theatrical compositions, her work has been honored with multiple ASCAP Plus Awards for her "creative contributions to American music." Kaye is the recipient of additional grants and awards from Meet the Composer, Mannes College of Music, the Fort Wayne Children's Choir, the New School and the Edward T. Cone Foundation, among others.

Visit www.debrakayecomposer.com for scores and sound samples of these and her other compositions as well as a link to purchase her recording. For high-resolution images, visit www.debrakayecomposer.com/pressimages.

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