“Something Old, Something New: A Celebration” unites family, friends and colleagues for a retrospective about the life of the late composer Randy Hostetler and the 50th wedding anniversary of his friends Larry and Mary Hewes. This special event, expressed musically by the Washington Saxophone Quartet, marks the world premiere of “Double Duet,” a commission composed for the WSQ by Lisa Bielawa, winner of the 2009-10 Rome Prize in Musical Composition.
Lisa and Randy were friends at Yale, where her a cappella group sang his jazz arrangements. They stayed in touch after each went on to productive lives, he as a composer until his untimely death at age 33, she as a member of the Philip Glass Ensemble for the past 18 years. With Glass, she co-founded the MATA Festival celebrating the work of young composers. During the second season, they performed a posthumous piece by Randy, a huge fan of Glass, whose “Company” is on Saturday’s program.
A quarter-century ago, the WSQ premiered Randy’s “Twenty-five Years,” dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Larry and Mary Hewes. It seemed only fitting to Bielawa that the ensemble premiere her work dedicated to Randy, one filled with double meanings.
“When I received the commission to write a piece celebrating an anniversary, the lifelong friendship between the Hewes and Hostetler families and memorializing Randy, it was an incredible honor,” Bielawa said. “The number two stood out because Randy’s piece and mine are dedicated to a couple and the WSQ consists of 2 + 2 instruments. Therefore, my composition became an experimentation with dual relationships. Randy was such a playful experimentalist that I had to be playful and seriously out of the box.”
The WSQ, founded in 1976, is heard more than any other saxophone quartet in the United States. Their recorded arrangements are played daily on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Former service band members, they regularly record music from their extensive repertoire, the most recent being “Different Times, Different Places.” The ensemble consists of Rich Kleinfeldt on tenor saxophone, Reginald Jackson on soprano saxophone, James Steele on alto saxophone and Rick Parrell on baritone saxophone.
