NEW YORK–In remarks introducing Vamp (2016), composer Anna Weesner recalled her father characterizing the saxophone as “a vulgar instrument,” an assessment hard to fathom after hearing the sophisticated gloss that the PRISM Quartet gave her new piece, just one of six world premieres the saxophone foursome presented on March 20 at Tenri Cultural Center, a small, high-ceilinged gallery space in New York’s Greenwich Village. Weesner uses a repeated motif—framed by well-timed pauses—to create a pulsing heartbeat, and the timbres produced by this one were uncannily diverse, often evoking other instruments, such as clarinet, trumpet, or bassoon.

Composer Kyle Bartlett uses a catalog of extended techniques in the five sections of her entertaining Unfolding (2016), including airless key clicks, for a light percussive effect. (The third movement, “Clockwork,” deploys these exclusively.) In the second movement, titled “Vulgarly” (perhaps acknowledging Weesner’s father’s comment), mechanical rhythms are interrupted by brief outbursts of flutter-tonguing (a sound similar to a tremolo) and slap-tonguing (sharply glottal popping sounds), turning instruments that are usually all about melody into ones about texture instead.

North Carolina-based composer and educator Ben Hjertmann describes his Awake, Alive, Amok, Ajar (2016) as “a work on the verge of losing control.” Its emphatic lines—brightly lit with occasional rhythmic ostinatos—converge like four uninhibited conversations, as if four people were all arguing their points simultaneously. At times the lines are anchored by a rhythmic groove; at others they dissolve into pitchless puffs of air. The result was appealing, as if Steve Reich had somehow crossed paths with John Coltrane.

Side Streets (2016) by Jay Reise, professor of music composition at the University of Pennsylvania, is a tribute to jazz saxophonist and composer Jimmy Giuffre (whose popular 1947 tune, Four Brothers, was written to show off the saxophones in the Woody Herman Orchestra). After a complex opening chord, again showing the PRISM crew’s refined balance, Reise alternates soaring lines with bursts of peppery, jumping rhythms, leading to a gently elegiac close. His warm chordal harmonies were perhaps the afternoon’s most explicitly jazz-influenced, and somewhere, Giuffre was probably smiling down in approval.

I look forward to the day when this is not news, but the fact that three of the composers represented on the program are women deserves noting. The third and youngest, Jane Lange, is a student at the Walden School in New Hampshire, where the quartet has had a long relationship, and she is the latest winner of Prism’s annual commissioning contest. SomewhatMusic, Mostly Noise(2016) could be retitled, “somewhat noise, mostly flat-out lovely.” It begins with a striking group glissando, descending as if in slow motion, and then travels through a landscape of short, microtonal slides. (It reminded me somewhat of Charles Ives’s song, “Like a Sick Eagle,” in which the singer gently slides from note to note through quarter-tones.) The sheer tonal beauty is beguiling, but Lange’s end result—a “sighing” effect—is even more striking.

The afternoon ended with Stratigraphy (2016) by James Primosch, also on the University of Pennsylvania faculty. Introducing his piece, Primosch mentioned he was inspired by geology—the word refers to the analysis of strata—and by spectralism, after reading pianist Marilyn Nonken’s book, The Spectral Piano: From Liszt, Scriabin, and Debussy to the Digital Age (2014, Cambridge University Press). Also director of piano studies at NUY’s Steinhardt School, Nonken has long been at the forefront of contemporary piano music, and has commissioned many new works. Here, as a guest with the ensemble, she offered clean, expertly balanced keyboard sound, often in delicate tracery—a welcome counterpoint to the saxophones. Primosch makes maximum use of the instruments’ contrasting timbres, framing the quartet with the piano—the latter often at the extreme ends of the keyboard. Each of the six movements has its beauties, but I was most struck with “Game of Pairs” (a nod to Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra), and the motoric sparkle of “Geochronologic.” 

Founded in 1984, PRISM has become highly regarded for its performances, educational efforts, and commissioning—to date over 200 works by a wide array of award-winning composers. The superb artists who make up the quartet—Timothy McAllister (soprano), Zachary Shemon (alto), Matthew Levy (tenor), and Taimur Sullivan (baritone)—could not have been more committed throughout the afternoon, wearing their virtuosity lightly and showing the premieres in the best possible light. If any of this could remotely be considered “vulgar,” we could use a lot more of it.