Superhighway (2024)
for saxophone and orchestra
Duration: 22’
First performed by Matthew Styles and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Umberto Clerici
9 and 10 August 2024, Perth Concert Hall
Commissioned for WASO by Geoff Stearn
Program Note - Superhighway
1. Heavy Haulage
2. Whales & Snails
3. Techno Wizard
My soundworld embraces a range of genres and stylistic juxtapositions, and this concerto is no exception. You may hear elements from funk, metal, punk, disco, prog-rock, blues, and perhaps even some gospel and hip-hop too, but most of all, I hope you will hear what a wonderfully diverse instrument the saxophone is. This is an instrument capable of extraordinary agility - it can be wild and unhinged one moment, and tender and honeyed the next. It can cut like a knife or be as smooth as velvet. It can be swift, slinky, savage, and sultry. In the hands of Matt Styles, it is all these things. In the spirit of spontaneity, there are a few built-in improvisation moments too - a nod to Matt’s accomplished career as a classical, jazz and cross-over performer.
Now, about that title. Concertos are the perfect vehicle to highlight a soloist, and with this in mind, the work explores the overarching theme of superhighways. I could write all day about metaphors of orchestras and soloists as highways and cars, but what I’m really interested in is music that just goes. I wanted to write a work from ‘go to whoa’, where the saxophone takes charge and harnesses a keep-on-truckin’ type of attitude.
The first (and longest) movement ‘Heavy Haulage’ is very much inspired by my commute from Western Sydney via the notorious M4 motorway. A truck in my rearview mirror is almost always a constant (and I can’t help but notice that some trucks have kinder faces than others). This movement amplifies this experience and imagines a superhighway on a much-larger scale. The highway weaves a crisscrossed web of on and off-ramps, and the alto sax must navigate its way forward, carving its own path. There are rapid stylistic changes throughout with the extroverted sax showing off its skills from section to section, continually seeking to outdo itself. Listen out for bluesy altissimo sax in the opening, hip-hop inspired slap-tongues in the middle, and dueling jams at the end.
The second movement features the soprano saxophone, providing a dramatic mood shift. Move over trucks and dogs and make way for ‘Whales & Snails’. This movement showcases the tender side of the saxophone, conjuring up a more lyrical musical language, with plenty of bends and smears from the orchestra lurking beneath. Inspired by migration superhighways or the Humpback Highway, this movement pays homage to the awe-inducing journey that thousands of whales make each winter to warmer waters. There’re also a few sea snails hitching a ride, too.
And finally, ‘Techno Wizard’. The third movement takes the idea of the information superhighway (the internet) as its starting point and imagines the saxophone as a master of the Dark Arts of Technology: a techno wizard. The sax acts as a hacker of sorts, bending the orchestra to its every whim. Conjuring up themes of data hacking and artificial intelligence, woodwinds, strings, and muted brass beep and whirr throughout, perhaps the inner workings of a machine. As a result, this movement is musically darker. The middle features plenty of bass instrument action (I’m looking at you, bassoons and low brass), as the saxophone surfs across the top. After an impromptu jam session with timpani and basses, the work ends on a joyous note, with the sax driving the work home in an almost gospel-influenced way.
Superhighway is generously commissioned for WASO by Geoff Stearn.
Reviews & Words
‘Commissioned for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra by Geoff Stearn and written for virtuoso saxophonist Matt Styles, the soloist on this occasion, Superhighway is a super concerto cast in the usual fast-slow-fast movements but in every other respect breaking the mould.
…Like the other works on the bill – Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides overture and Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique – Superhighway is programmatic music which also succeeds on its own terms as a gloriously abstract yet visceral rollercoaster ride. To quote Harrison again, “I could write all day about metaphors of orchestras and soloists as highways and cars, but what I’m really interested in is music that just goes.”
And go it did, thanks not just to Harrisons’ engaging and inventive score but to Styles’ confident, relaxed virtuosity, and WASO’s and QSO Chief Conductor Umberto Clerici’s grasp of, and clear enthusiasm for, the music.
If the first and second movements – Heavy Haulage and Whales & Snails – are easier to relate to their real-world inspirations – the sax as car driver, navigating a superhighway weaving “a criss-crossed web of on and off-ramps”; the “migration superhighways” of Humpback whales – the third, Techno Wizard, takes its inspiration from the less physically tangible world of the internet, imagining “the saxophone as a master of the Dark Arts of Technology: a techno wizard.” In other words, a hacker.
Adding a drum kit (Holly’s own instrument of choice) to the traditional orchestra, Superhighway is a fun, edgy commentary on our natural, built and tech environments that received a worthy world premier performance here, the aptly-named Styles laying out his prodigious musical wares and exercising his stylistic chops as he ducked, dove and weaved amid an orchestral backdrop as complex as it is colourful.
Superhighway brings funk, disco and blues decisively into the Perth Concert Hall and celebrates Styles’ in full. Perhaps by way of distinction from Mendelssohn and Berlioz (still to come) was Harrison’s use of sounds, melodies and combinations that depart from the traditional in the best way possible. Bass and sax feature at times, wind in others, but every part of the puzzle is dancing its own dynamic routine that is entirely cohesive in parallel. Absolutely brilliant.