VOJVODINA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Conductor: Timothy REDMOND (UK)
Soloists:
SIGNUM SAXOPHONE QUARTET (Germany)
Matija DEDIĆ, piano (Croatia)
Programme:
L. BERNSTEIN:
On the Town, Three Dance Episodes
B. MINTZER:
Rhythms of America, for the saxophone quartet and orchestra
***
G. GERSHWIN:
Rhapsody in Blue, for the piano and orchestra
Porgy and Bess, Symphonic picture

The concert has been supported by: Goethe Institut

Tickets are available at: Musical Youth of Novi Sad (Katlicka porta street 2, Novi Sad, tel.021/452-344) Buy on-line tickets here

SIGNUM SAXOPHONE QUARTET, Germany
“Regardless if their music is ear-piercing, sharp, or painful, the audience seems to sink into its streams completely. Playing sometimes powerful and fast, sometimes gentle and slow, but always with certainty, firmly, and memorably the artists show impressively on their saxophones the usual “classical” potentials of these instruments, although they are even more impressive in convincing revealing of the notes one would never have thought possible to produce. At the same time, they achieve a perfect homogeneity of the quartet sound, providing to their playing, which goes on in a special mood, the attributes of an unforgettable event and rare listening experience.”
These were the impressions, translated freely, published in the German Magazine Rhein Main Presse in September 2010 on the occasion of one of the concerts held by the Signum Saxophone Quartet, which connects four different sound and artistic characters in a unique performing body. In addition to huge dynamic range and extraordinary musicality, these four exceptional musicians are also known after the exciting joy of creation, which singles out this ensemble among many other excellent chamber formations.
Being colleagues from their student’s days, Blaž Kemperle (soprano saxophone), Erik Nestler (alto saxophone), Alan Lužar (tenor saxophone) and Guerino Bellarosa met in Cologne where they founded their rare ensemble in 2006. Their education links them also with Vienna and Amsterdam, and from the very beginning they have been inspired by the Quatuor Ébène, Artemis Quartet and Gabor Takács-Nágy quartets. For a long time they have been in regular “pedagogical” contact with renowned musicians working permanently on both the individual and joint perfecting, receiving the instructions from Daniel Gauthier (Cologne), Raphael Merlin (Ébène), Friedemann Weigle (Artemis), and Gerhard Schulz (Alban Berg). The award-winning at international competitions amongst others in Lugano, Berlin, and Verona (first prize in the chamber music category at Torneo International Competition, 2011), the Signum Quartet nowadays plays in numerous major concert halls and at festivals all over Europe. In 2013, they made their debut in the Carnegie Hall in New York. The Rising Stars 2014/2015 recognition awarded to them by the European Concert Hall Organisation (ECHO) is of special significance. The concert map of Signum that has been spreading via France, Holland, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, Lithuania, and Montenegro all up to Thailand and Russia, including the above-mentioned renowned festival events, last year encompassed the concerts in London (Barbican Centre), Vienna (Konzerthaus), Amsterdam (Concertgebouw), Brussels (Palais des Beaux Arts), Florence (Teatro della Pergola), Lisbon (Gulbenkian), Baden-Baden, Luxembourg, Hamburg, Dortmund, Cologne, and Schleswig Holstein. This season it continues with new concerts in the Barbican Centre, Grand Philharmonic Hall in St. Petersburg, in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, then again in Luxembourg, Salzburg, Zürich, Bern, Bremen, Dresden, Japan, and the debuts at the Arts Center in Seoul and at Novi Sad Music Festivities. Searching constantly for new contacts the ambitious saxophonists have worked with Folkert Uhde in a production of Bach’s Art of Fugue as well as with several interesting artists with whom they extended their ensemble. They were the cellists Mario Brunello, Mathias Bartolomey, and Harriet Krijgh, a young Lithuanian accordion player Martynas, and pianists Michail Liftis, and Julien Quentin. The co-operation with diverse orchestras yielded with the idea on premiere performing of the Concerto for Orchestra and Sax Quartet by Philip Glass in Genova and Vilnius this year.
Since recently, the Signum Quartet has been involved in music theatre for children and teenagers, creating their first own theatre show titled Stand by me – the Signum sound experience directed by Letizia Renzini, a kind of visual concert for families with children (8+), about sound, imagination and friendship. A successful premiere produced by Philhamonie Luxembourg and Kölner Philharmonie was held in Luxembourg in January this year. The first CD of the Quartet titled DEBUT featuring the works by Grieg, Ravel, Bartók and Schostakowitsch was released in May 2011 under the ARS Produktion label. The second CD titled Balkanication was released in December 2014. The third was released in 2016.

BOB MINTZER, saxophone, USA/Germany
A member of the Yellowjackets ensemble for almost 30 years (Grammy winner), leader of the Big Band (also winner of the same prize) and his own Quartet, this brilliant American saxophone player, composer and music arranger plays also with many other ensembles around the world. Recently he has become the chief conductor of the WDR Big Band in Cologne and as a recognised lecturer he was awarded the role of the head of the jazz studio at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Being mainly linked with that city he continues organising and holding master classes and workshops in many artistic and school centres of different European and American countries. In that sense, a high significance is to be attributed to almost twenty books – school reference books that makes an important segment of bibliography for education of jazz musicians of different style commitments and levels of study. The authorial opus of Bob Mintzer with almost 300 pieces of music includes orchestral music and those for a “concert” band, big band, various small bands, and saxophone quartets. Most of his music makes a regular repertoire of many jazz bands that perform it, as the data say, “all around the globe”. This versatile musician (being also often the guest conductor) “sharpens” his creative and instrumental capacities working with the bands such as Tito Puente, Buddy Rich, and Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band applying them also in the works written for the National Holland Symphony Orchestra (Metropolitan Orchestra), WDR Big Band in Cologne and HR Big Band in Frankfurt, but also to the ordered piece for tenor saxophone and “concert” band suggested on the idea of 50 universities. As highly demanded soloist, Bob Mintzer has worked with the musicians such as Art Blakey, Jaco Pastorius, Sam Jones, Randy Brecker, Gil Evans, Mike Manieri, the Yellowjackets and GRP All Star Big Band and New York Philharmonic. He has also worked for James Taylor, Steve Winwood, Donald Fagan, Milton Nascimento, The Queen and many other individuals and bands.

MATIJA DEDIĆ, piano, Croatia
Born in Zagreb to a famous family of artists, Matija naturally started his music education very early, at the age of five already. Having completed the Vatroslav Lisinski Music School he enrolled the Jazz Academy in Graz in 1991. He graduated in 1997 in the class of Professor Harald Neuwirth having attended in parallel the private lessons in Cologne with John Taylor, Hal Galper, Bill Dobins and Barry Harris. Having returned to his hometown in 1997 he started playing more often in his homeland and abroad performing with his own band (Boliers Quartet) and co-operating with Benny Golson, Kenny Burell, Roy Haynes, Jose Feliciano, and All Stars Band. Meanwhile, he also got the opportunity to play in Tamara Obrovac Quartet. Over the years he has played in Italy, Germany, Slovakia, England, Brazil, Belgium, Turkey, Spain, Austria, former Yugoslav republics, France, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Hungary, Greece, Morocco, USA, Czech Republic, Argentina, and Portugal. The list of artists with whom he performs is truly extensive and it includes some of the most significant names of international jazz and pop scene. Matija Dedić also writes music for television and theatre, and also occasionally plays with some of the most prominent popular music names in Croatia. In the year 2000, the Croatian Composers Society awarded his album Octopussy as the best author and best jazz newcomer in the last 10 years, namely the achievement of the best young Croatian composer and author in that period.
In July 2002, Matija Dedić performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in France as one of 11 finalists who were chosen from more than 400 pianists around the world, and as a true successor of his father Arsen Dedić, the winner of Premio tenco and Jacques Brel awards, and his mother Gabi Novak who sang with Luis Armstrong, Garry Burton, Phill Woods, Toots Tielmans, Hellen Merril, and Joe Turner during her career.

TIMOTHY REDMOND, conductor (UK)
A regular guest conductor with the London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Redmond holds concerts and he works all around Europe with many of the leading British and European orchestras. In his homeland he has conducted concerts with the Philharmonia, and BBC Concert orchestras, as well as with philharmonic orchestras from Hallé, Liverpool, and Ulster, and National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and Sinfonia Viva orchestra. He has been co-operating for years with the Manchester Camerata, and since 2006 he has been the chief conductor of the Cambridge Philharmonic. Abroad, Redmond has appeared with the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini (Italy), Concerto Budapest (Hungary), in Finland he is frequently conducting the Oulu Sinfonia and he has also toured Estonia (Vanemuine Orchestra). He has also conducted the Sarajevo Philharmonic, Macedonian Philharmonic, Maribor Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and Wexford Festival Orchestra in Ireland. Timothy Redmond is well-known and appreciated as contemporary music performer, in particular the works by Thomas Adès with whom he co-operated closely for the premiere of his The Tempest (Covent Garden), as well as critically-acclaimed productions of musical-stage piece Powder Her Face (prepared for the English National Opera, Royal Opera House and Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg). Recently, he gave the Hungarian premiere of Totentanz and assisted the composer for the New York premiere of The Tempest at the Metropolitan Opera. Timothy Redmond is also highly demanded opera conductor in England (Opera North, English National Opera, English Touring Opera, Almeida Opera) and abroad. Among others, he prepared and conducted the world premiere of Peter Ash’s The Golden Ticket for the Opera Theatre of St Louis which he also performed in Europe at the Wexford Festival.
As theatre artist, Redmond is also present in Bregenz, at Tenerife and in Los Angeles, as well as in the American Lyric Theater in New York, festivals at Buxton and Aldeburgh, and he is also a member of music management at the De Vlaamse Opera in Antwerp, and opera houses in Strasbourg, Garsington and Glyndebourne. Timothy Redmond made numerous recordings for Warner Classics, Harmonia Mundi, EMI and CDs (with the Royal Northern Sinfonia chamber orchestra). Recently, among other accomplishments, he celebrated successful premieres of works by Edward Rushton and Peter Maxwell Davies (with the London Symphony Orchestra), his debut in China, and the open air concert (at the Trafalgar Square) that was attended by 10,000 people. This season, in addition to regular concerts with “his” permanent orchestras, he is expected at a debut concert in Canada (Regina Symphony), concert in Romania (Oradea Philharmonic), concert with the Vojvodina Symphony Orchestra at Nomus and with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana in Milan. The artist also plans to conduct concert performances of Bartok’s’ Bluebeard’s Castle in Cambridge, as well as new opera performances in Aldeburgh and in the Independent Opera at Sadler’s Wells Theatre. Redmond was a prominent student at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester University and the Academia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, as well as the student at master classes held by great conductors such as George Hurst, Ilya Musin, Yan-Pascal Tortelier and Pierre Boulez and an assistant to Elgar Howarth, Valery Gergiev and Sir Colin Davis.
Recently, he was appointed Professor of Conducting at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.