With his new work, Jazz Miniatures for Double Quartet, Alexis Cuadrado continues to define his compositional voice following his recent impressive works A Lorca Soundscape and Noneto Ibérico. With this Jazz Gallery Residency Commission, Cuadrado takes a new musical step, this time with strings, exploring the intersection of jazz, flamenco and new chamber music.
Alexis elaborates: “My main goal as a composer is to write music that feeds the soul and the brain equally. With Jazz Miniatures I’m looking for a new challenge. I’m writing for a string quartet, which in its own has an amazing history, from Mozart and Beethoven to Bartok, Shostakovich, Ravel and Debussy arriving at Philip Glass, Steve Reich and beyond; and on the other hand I have a jazz quartet without piano or guitar formed with some of the coolest improvisers in NYC. I’m also nurturing my flamenco and new music influences and balancing it all out with this series of seemingly disparate vignettes.”
If you’re wondering what Große Fugue, Ornette Coleman, Hungarian Gypsy music, Flamenco master vocalist Camarón de la Isla and the Beatles’ Piggies have in common, you just might hear it in Alexis’ Jazz Miniatures for Double Quartet.
Alexis Cuadrado - bass
Ben Wendel - saxophones and bassoon
Jason Rigby - saxophones, flutes and clarinets
Satoshi Takeishi - drums and percussion
Sara Caswell - violin
Antonia Nelson - violin
Lois Martin - viola
Jody Redhage - cello