Michael Shearer – Two Dances
Benjamin Tassie – Unfold
Louis Johnson – Descending and Ascending
Luke Lewis – Seven Notes of Nancarrow
Alexander Woolf -  ex spiritu

The final, will be held at The Forge, Camden on 7th July 2012 and tickets will be available directly from the venue’s website soon.
Many thanks to all entrants for the competition this year,  we received a record number of entries with the standard being higher than ever before.

We look forward to seeing you at the final in July.

Sarah’s performance work as an international saxophonist and trumpeter is diverse and wholly unique. Performances have taken her recently with “Sting” on his tour of Europe and newly released DVD “On a Winters Night”. In 2010 she opened singer ‘Seal’’s Australian & European Tours with a featured solo to audiences of 16,000.

Field’s solo classical work sees her broadcast on BBC Radio 2, 3 & Classic fM and perform concertos with BBC Concert Orchestra & RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland.

The LSQ would like to publicly thank their previous baritone player, and founding member, Lauren Hamer for all her hard work and dedication to the quartet as well wish her every success in her new career as a school teacher!

Given the instrument’s historical context, the Lunar Saxophone Quartet operate where classical shades into jazz. Hence the inclusion of Keith Tippett’s Five Short Pieces, playfully evoking occupations of antiquity (archery, smithing, fencing) and the dance pieces comprising Eric Schwarz’s 4 Chair Legs. Elsewhere, scientific schema inspire Gabriel Jackson’s LM-7: Aquarius, a virtuosic piece about the Lunar Module. The highlights though, are less dynamic: James Williamson’s In Memoriam is achingly contemplative, while the title of Lucy Pankhurst’s Diaphanousphere suggests the delicate webs of sound created by the quartet.

Applications are invited from any British student at College, University of Conservatoire level.

The Application deadline is February 14th 2012 , however, initial contact with the LSQ is needed by November 1st 2011 in order to have the opportunity to workshop your work (in progress) prior to submission with our competition composer in residence.

Good luck and please get in touch should you need any further information.

The Welsh composers for this saxophone quartet, recorded in Ty Cerdd June/July, range in age from early twenties to ’50s, and all are interesting in different ways. LSQ stress that they like to work with composers from early rehearsals “when the music gets done”. Commissioning new scores is the life-blood of their repertoire; there is “no fallback postion into repertoire of the past”. The disc is very up-to-date; one of the pieces had its premiere only this month…

I tend to be cautious with ‘classical’ saxophones; they can be strident and assertive, especially in small-venue recitals, but here the sound is home-friendly, mainly discreet and mellow.  Signum’s production is strikingly good; properly informative and interesting notes, with graphic design and photography unified.

The Independent
Andy Gill (10th December 2010)

The Lunar Saxophone Quartet is reliant largely on specific commissions, which gives their repertoire a modern flavour, with pieces written for them by composers such as John Metcalf and Hilary Tann.

Both have work included here, alongside younger Welsh composers such as Christopher Painter, whose five-part Lunar Seas suite bestows descriptive realisations of moon features – eg. the misty “Sea Of Vapours” and the animated “Ocean Of Storms”. Metcalf’s On Song features gently interleaving lines of soprano, alto and tenor saxes over resonant baritone, while Tann’s Some Of The Silence is inspired by a haiku, “a deep gorge…/some of the silence/is me”, and presents a world of calm and solitude.