Bowerbird is pleased to present the New Thread Quartet at University Lutheran Church.
New Thread Quartet presents Explorations, Vol. 9: W[e]ave, featuring the music of Sam Alvarez, Dror Binder, Eduardo Caballero, Elsie Bae Han, Kalle Vainio, and LJ White. The annual Explorations Series, now in its 9th iteration, represents our belief in contemporary music as a life-affirming force for good.
The works by Binder, Caballero, Han, and Vainio were winners of our 2026 Call for Scores, which received over 150 submissions. These four pieces were selected for their quality, originality, and fit with our programming mission: to propose an expansive view of contemporary music, its aesthetics and its creators. To these we added Sam Alvarez’s beautiful, a kind of forgetting, from 2024, and commissioned a vital new work from LJ White.
W[e]ave refers to sound waves and the weaving together of interdependent voices that is chamber music. Alvarez’s work begins with the four alto saxophones producing nearly inaudible cascades of sound, whose tonal symmetries, microtonal inflections, and multiphonic colorations are revealed and then respun to a tenderly dramatic conclusion. White’s piece is timbral meditation on the flickering of fire and the breathing body, while Binder’s opening pointillistic polyrhythms weave into a new thread of passed long tones and trio pulses. Han’s highly structured 12-tone canon evolves into a highly playful, improvisatory game on its original material. By braiding together pulsations of widely varying lengths and intensities, Caballero provokes the acoustic phenomenon of wave interference to visceral effect. Vainio’s deeply meditative work unfurls in a rhythmic canon strictly governed by the Fibonacci sequence.
PROGRAM
a kind of forgetting (2024) — Sam Alvarez (b. 2001)
Fire and Air (2026) World Premiere — LJ White (b. 1984)
Und meine begeisterten Augen
Weiten sich wieder und blinken und brennen sich wund (2026) — Dror Binder (b. 1993)
even after all this time…I still don’t know (2022) — Elsie Bae Han
Puls[o][e]…espectral teatro de reflejos (2023) — Eduardo Caballero (b. 1976)
Weaving Waves (2026) — Kalle Vainio (b.1986)
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
New Thread Quartet was formed with the mission to develop and perform impactful new music for the saxophone, and to provide high level ensemble playing to feature today’s compositional voices. In 14 seasons, the quartet has commissioned and premiered over 150 new works at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Roulette, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Morgan Library, Bang on a Can Summer Festival Benefit, and Monadnock Music. New Thread has performed its annual fall Explorations and spring Electric Sax Series at Manhattan’s Dimenna Center and Cell Theater.
Based in New York City, New Thread regularly conducts masterclasses, residencies, and performances for student saxophonists and composers at Peabody Conservatory, University of Virginia, Berklee Conservatory, the University of California Los Angeles, Amherst College, and New York University. The quartet has recorded on New World Records, Innova, and New Focus Recordings. New Thread is a presenting partner of Composers Now.
Ensemble members are Jonathan Hulting-Cohen (soprano saxophone), Noa Even (alto saxophone), Erin Rogers (tenor saxophone), and Zach Herchen (baritone saxophone).