In October of 2013 SIGMA Project launches its own record label, Sigma Records, editing and presenting at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid its CD “Utopias: New Music for Saxophone Quartet” with the registration of 6 new quartets dedicated to the group, and written by Jesús Torres, Germán Alonso, Ramon Lazkano, José Manuel López López, Felix Ibarrondo and Juan José Eslava.


SIX SOUNDSCAPES FOR THE NEW MILLENIUM
Germán Gan Quesada
Musicologist and music critic. Associate Professor (Department of Art and Musicology, University Autonoma of Barcelona).

Already sailing around the cape of their first five years of activity, SIGMA Project maps, with this record proposal, the territories of contemporary sound creation, temporary and inaccurate, as every cartography that tries to escape from the paradoxical rigor of Borges’ fable. And it is precisely in this condition perhaps where the greatest virtues of this CD lay: offering a kaleidoscopic panorama, with plurality as a legend, of what it means to exercise untethered music composition for the last five years; opening references for interpretation of that territory, and weaving, almost involuntarily, a dense network of interrelations among the six “transitstations” traveled.

Indeed, there are underground currents that energize its content, beyond detailed technical considerations, impertinent for an unprejudiced approach to what this record offers: aesthetic and generational crossroads, coexistence between research of new concepts for sound material and the achievement of a radical expression - in its dual sense of incorruptible creative attitude and depth in the basis of auditory perception-, or a common French connection, either by training, elective affinity, or career, which reveals the irrepressible overflow of geographical and cultural borders of current Spanish music.

However relevant these meetings are, they should not hide the inherent diversity –joined by the common sound framework of the saxophone quartet–, which comes from putting to work six poetics of sharp profile; different maturities, certainly, but all of them in unstable equilibrium –so typical of the present situation of poetic plurality– between the harvest of instrumental investigations from the long tradition of avant-garde, and the rupture with well-to-do listener expectations.

Thus, we witness a polymorphic deployment, reluctant to any reductive delimitation of the whole, circumstance that invites us to a specific observation of each of the proposals represented.

Six soundscapes for the new millennium, six bets, in short, born out of the vocation of four performers, to contribute to the discovery of spaces of listening ‘other’, perhaps utopian, but only in what utopia has of ideal, necessary and open to absolute, as it is the additive conjunction of efforts and concerns involved in the most alive music that presides over the work of SIGMAProject, under the sign of Σ...

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SIGMA PROJECT, THE SOUND OF PASSION
Jorge Fernández Guerra (Madrid, 1952) is a composer (National Music Prize, 2007); Manager (former Director of the Centre for Diffusion of Contemporary Music and the Music Festival of Alicante); and Music Critic (Twelve Notes, ABC, El País, and other publications).

Five years ago –or more, according to the time when you read this text – a new musical collective was born in Spain: SIGMA Project. The idea was beating in the restless mind of a group of contending artists for at least ten months before. However, we had to wait for a concert in the 69th Quincena Musical Donostiarra to see four saxophonists, dressed like angels or some martial-art fighters (barefoot and rigorously in white), showing for the first time in our geography. It was August 27, 2008.
Their second artistic appearance concerns me personally in my capacity as former Director of the extinct CDMC. It was at the Auditorio 400 of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, on October 27 of that same 2008, at the Series I had the honor to program. Since then, they have not stopped offering concerts in Spain and the international scene.

Five intense years have passed. We have suffered, for instance, an economic and social crisis. But we have also seen the fecundity of a project, unusual to a certain point as every good project is, and which seemed to be born already very mature and complete.
The truth is: if the adventures of SIGMA Project were a crime, they would have prescribed. And it may be somehow a wonderful crime to be born with that desire and illusion and, at the same time, boast of seniority and high professionalism.

What is, then, the mystery of a career that has not ever lifted the foot off the accelerator and that today, after just five years and a few breaths, seems to be an indispensable part of the Spanish musical scene? If I had to risk a first opinion, I would say that it has to do with the mystery of the saxophone: one of the most fascinating and misleading instrumental sounds of our modernity. Although it already has a history of two centuries of existence, from the venerable times of Adolphe Sax and the colorful Paris International Exhibition of the 19th century, the saxophone remains an instrument that seems to irritate before seducing, as if enrolled in its genetic code was a sonority that surprises before settling as one final stroke of our landscape. Stravinsky said not to love it just before recognizing that no other could better portray the sinful morbidity of Lulu. Jazz became its ID, and contemporary music (whatever we mean by that) found it intact. The saxophone seems to be born yesterday, and much of that was captured by the four virtuosos of SIGMA Project.

Naturally, the saxophone that SIGMA Project conceived is what might be called -and sorry for the neologism-, a hypersaxophon: a multiple instrument which manifests itself through a prodigious family of sonorities, tessitura and forms. The four virtuosos of SIGMA Project dare any instrument of the range, from the lowest to the sharpest, and show that, from bel canto to broken sound, saxophone opens doors to the backrooms of sound, allowing expression to the -until recently- almost inaudible in music. Some will say that sound breaking is not exclusive of the saxophone. In fact, multiple, harmonic, percussive sounds, microtones, attacks, etc. have taken over the latest instrumental techniques, with special emphasis on wind instruments. But it is fair to acknowledge that, on the saxophone, all widening of those sounds sounds at home; no musical instrument becomes as “naturally” contemporary as saxophone (with the exception of percussion, but with different connotations.)

However, if the instrument can explain part of the driving force behind SIGMA Project, it does not explain it all. SIGMA Project is “naturally” contemporary like the instrument in which it is embodied. But there are features of its commitment which are self-explanatory: a passion for the current repertoire, which extends to constant commissions to current composers regardless of generation; constant premieres and first performances in Spain; curiosity about widening the concept of concert itself, promiscuity to mix other “naturally” contemporary sounds, as electronics; the need to engage in dialogue with collective orchestral or colluding with other instruments’ performers. In sum: SIGMA Project’s total involvement with an artistic adventure, exploring any consequence of the modernity, defines a path of remarkable singularity.

That a group so consolidated and paradoxically experienced (as if in five years they had burned the stages of 5 lustra) presents now its first recording on compact disc talks about the CD crisis rather than about mi- sunderstandings. The aficionado should not give importance to this fact, especially because SIGMA Project is a group to be listened to live, as they often say about certain pop bands. Their presence on stage, their sense of ceremony and the calculated but courageous use of spatiality make of them a vibrant show. And I do not quote spatiality last in importance. On the contrary, when they undertake a review of spatiality, SIGMA Project musicians do not stay only at the acoustic data. They like to break the virtual stage barrier, inviting the listener to be positioned in front of the sound with renewed freedom; they are not afraid of the theatrical, however always at the service of musical projection.

Of course, for those who know the personal backgrounds of some of its protagonists, the creation and further development of SIGMA Project is neither surprising nor unexpected. This group has active musicians, hardened in a thousand artistic battles, marked by permanent concern and work. At the project’s birth, we knew immediately it was a winning bet. However, different incidences could always have happened: the contingency of tiredness, other personal and artistic projects that cross on the road of such experienced and valued professionals or, anyway, many particular incidences. It would not have been the first time. For this reason, it is comforting to see that they remain faithful to their original ambition, to perceive the growth in diversity and intensity of their commitment, and to note that their path already covers many pages of an accomplished, professional, good curriculum, particularly in times of hardship and complications.

So, I congratulate SIGMA Project for maintaining their commitment with strong pulse, and I am pleased to see that the white bud (a “stockhausean colour”, as they say and have chosen for the majority of their clothing in concerts) is already a strong stem, and that its five years and what comes, are already a part of the history of Spanish contemporary music. Some may not care much about this but, for me, it is Life itself, and I am sure that is also for them. For this reason, infinite thanks and lots of encouragement for the rest of their artistic lives.

Jorge Fernández Guerra