By: textura.com | April, 2024

Whereas ~Nois's 2020 debut album Is This ~Nois celebrated the saxophone quartet's Chicago hometown by featuring material by composers associated with the city, its follow-up Kinds of ~Nois cuts the number of composers in half whilst simultaneously broadening the points of origin. That's because its six works are by the Kinds of Kings collective, which comprises Shelley Washington, Gemma Peacocke, and Maria Kaoutzani. While Washington hails from Kansas City, the now Chicago-based Kaoutzani came from Limassol, Cyprus and currently teaches at Knox University; similarly, Peacocke now calls Princeton, New Jersey home but grew up in New Zealand. Kinds of ~Nois is issued under the quartet's name, but it's as much a Kinds of Kings project and a collaboration that flatters both parties.

Each composer's work is distinguished by different points of concern: voice and text play significant roles in Kaoutzani's pieces, many of which use poetry or literature as springboards; in her work, Peacocke gives voice to the oppressed and under-heard, be they women, refugees, migrants, or otherwise; and Washington is a rabble-rouser who likes to shake things up, call out social injustices, and make, in her words, “lots and lots of noise”; she also performs regularly as a saxophonist and, in fact, sits in with the quartet on baritone on one of her two pieces. In featuring two compositions by each figure (all world premiere recordings and written expressly for ~Nois), Kinds of ~Nois presents a satisfyingly well-balanced portrait of Kinds of Kings.

Comprising János Csontos (baritone), Julian Velasco (soprano), Jordan Lulloff (tenor), and Hunter Bockes (alto), ~Nois has refined its identity and group chemistry since its 2016 founding. The unit executes its material with laser-sharp precision without ever sounding clinical. In focusing on the presentation of formally notated classical material, ~Nois doesn't generally engage in the kind of raucous free play a jazz saxophone quartet would get up to; even so, without sacrificing control this technically sound outfit infuses its performances with passion and energy. The saxophonists have achieved a balance in their execution that allows each voice to be clearly heard whilst also blending harmoniously with the others.

The pieces are sequenced in reverse chronological order, such that the release concludes with the first collaboration between the two groups, Peacocke's Dwalm, an exercise in patiently blossoming rapture ~Nois premiered in 2018. For her album-opening Hazel, she drew for inspiration from Pablo Neruda's poem “Lost in the Forest,” the result a piece of commanding stature that plays to many of the quartet's strengths. It's at one moment rhythmically propulsive, at another daringly achromatic and intricately woven, and at yet another as soft as a whisper.

Pitched as “a musical depiction of her neuro-divergent experience of ‘time blindness,'” Washington's Eternal Present advances from the plaintive utterances of the tender lament “Now” to the unison bird-like calls of the animated “Always.” Hints of jazz seep into the boisterous polyrhythmic swing of Kaoutzani's Count Me In, whose flickering cross-currents of interlocking saxes tickle the ear. As attention-getting is Washington's BIG Talk, which begins with the composer reciting a self-penned text decrying the physical, verbal, and emotional abuses women suffer daily before moving on to an extended instrumental blowout that with her baritone added swells to a blistering quintet throwdown. With Csontos and Washington blazing at the forefront, this album highlight becomes as much baritone battle as kinetic group expression. Coming down from the heat generated by BIG Talk is Kaoutzani's Shore to Shore, an ethereal meditative chorale characterized by swarms of tremolos and other textural micro-activity.

There are legions of string quartets but far fewer of the saxophone kind. There's PRISM Quartet, of course, and outfits such as Apollo Saxophone Quartet, World Saxophone Quartet, and Rova Saxophone Quartet have brought deserved attention to the format. With Kinds of ~Nois, this proud Chicago unit makes a compelling case for its right to stand with such distinguished company.