Calefax this year celebrates its thirty-fifth anniversary as the world’s first reed quintet with several activities.
In October Calefax released the new album Bach’s Musical Offerings en toured with 35 Years of Plenty. Calefax gives a chance for all wind players to play along with Calefax at home. Later in this concert season, there follow several premieres and a radio documentary made in collaboration with Radiomakers Desmet.
In thirty-five years, Calefax evolved from a music group of five schoolboys to an ensemble of world fame.
With five pieces, each chosen by one of the musicians, we look back and relive highlights from Calefax’ history. Each piece is introduced by a video in which one of the reed players shares the impact the work had on himself or on Calefax. Watch a teaser of one of the video’s.
Watch the live stream from our concert on November 25th 2020 in Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Amsterdam.
Calefax celebrates its birthday with the new album Bach’s Musical Offerings, that holds a collection of musical offerings by Johann Sebastian Bach, arranged by our saxophonist Raaf Hekkema.
Hekkema worked for almost ten years on the arrangement of Musikalisches Opfer, the main course of this programme. Arthur Klaassens joins us on a lupophone and english horn for this piece, as well as for the 14 Canons, BWV 1087, further expanding our sonic palette. The album concludes with Bach’s Canonic variations on Vom Himmel hoch. All nine know versions of the melody have found a place in Raafs arrangement, resulting in a many-coloured Christmas collage.
Tour
From 11 October untill 7 March 2021 we play repertoire from the album in concert.
We give all our wind playing fans the opportunity to play along with a track of our new album.
From the Ricercar of Musikalisches Opfer, we made six seperate recordings in which one of the instruments is missing. Wind players can download their sheet music with the audio file in which their part is missing.