GROSSO DAMN
Concerto for Saxophone Quartet & Wind Ensemble
Written for Assembly Quartet
World Premiere March 12-15 2026 North American Saxophone Association National Conference
The Ohio State University - Columbus, OH
2025 | 24 Minutes | Very-hard
I. South of Heaven
II. The Hope Abandoned
III. Both Sides of The Sky
When the collaboration with the Assembly Saxophone Quartet began, I stumbled upon a work of art that captured my attention and imagination. The work was Peter Paul Reuben’s The Fall of the Damned- a baroque painting depicting the fall of rebel angels- being stripped of their angel wings and being condemned to the pits of hell- turning into fallen angels. The painting was both gruesome and beautiful with the use of color and drama. I studied the work to find more emotion and more of the imagery and what truly struck me wasn’t just the imagery, it was the story behind it. Flash forward to the 1960s, when the painting became the target of a bizarre act of vandalism. A man named Heinz Bihl threw acid on the painting, and in his own strange words, he claimed he didn’t intend to destroy it. Instead, he said the acid would "relieve one from the work of destruction." His reasoning, however disjointed, was that the acid would add the needed beauty to the work however this distorted the painting, adding to its horror rather than wiping it away. To me, this wasn’t just about the physical damage to the artwork; it was about how it transformed the piece into something even more unsettling, a distortion of the original vision and oddly enough opening a dark form of beauty.
When I first heard this story, it made me think deeply about the different time periods these events came from. Rubens created the painting during the Baroque period, a time of social order, naive control, and grand scale. Then, in the 1960s, the world was in the midst of a cultural revolution—marked by rebellion, the pursuit of freedom, and societal upheaval. The contrast between these two times felt almost too dramatic to ignore. It was as if the very essence of the painting had been torn from its roots, transformed by this act of destruction in a way that reflected the tumultuous world of the 60s.
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This clash of worlds became the inspiration for my concerto. I wanted to capture the essence of "The Fall of the Damned" and the feelings I had about its history, using the language of Baroque music combined with the vivid, distorted colors of psychedelic rock. This would create Grosso Damn.
The saxophone quartet became my vessel for storytelling. While the individual players stand apart, they come together as one unified force, sometimes mimicking the sounds of classical guitar, other times, an amplified electric guitar. The first movement South of Heaven represents the beginning of the descent—grounded in the world of Baroque music, with its structure and tension, a kind of musical falling into chaos.
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The second movement is a floating purgatory - both in a musical way and for me in a spiritual/creative way, there was a gap in writing the original movement to the second movement in a span of 6 months. During that time the work started to have a different feeling and meaning to me. I began to ask myself what would the sound of a melting feather be? What would the emotions be like? The second movement, The Hope Abandoned pays homage to Dante’s Divine Comedy - specifically Inferno. With this movement I use unique percussion techniques like crotales on snare, super ball mallets on drums and cymbals, and different materials like aluminum foil to slowly create feelings of distortion and melting. The ensemble not only play but speak with despair and fleeting hopeful lines paint a space known as The Melting Feather Theory. The quartet play melodic lines that are both melancholic and beautiful
The final movement Both Sides of the Sky pays homage to Jimi Hendrix, an influential mind to the sound of psychedelic rock and black music. Studying Hendrix’s solos and songs, I realized his musical identity was a bridge between what at the time was considered demonic rock, with sultry sinning blues, and connecting it all back to the rooted gospel. With this movement I wanted there to be a feeling of how all these aesthetics are connected. In biblical terms the devil was an angel of music so it would be fitting that there is influence in good and evil found in music. For me, this piece is about embracing the beauty and turmoil that come when worlds collide, when order gives way to rebellion, and when the past meets the present in unexpected ways. And just like "The Fall of the Damned", it’s a reminder that sometimes, from destruction, something new and profound can emerge—something that can’t help but be both haunting and freeing.
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Throughout writing this work I found myself constantly asking a question that I decided to leave the listener wondering: if an angel falls, can the angel rise up or are the wings forever gone?
Are we redeemable or are we damned from the beginning?
ASSEMBLY QUARTET
The Assembly Quartet is a professional chamber music ensemble whose mission is to promote music education and expand the enjoyment of music for people of all ages. Originally formed in 2003 by graduate students at the University of South Carolina, the Quartet’s principal objective was, and remains, to engage with audiences in public schools and communities, working with students and audiences that often have limited experience with chamber music or with the music of our time.
Assembly has completed week-long residencies in North Dakota, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Michigan, and Texas performing and teaching in area schools and offering evening recitals; additionally, the group has been featured in performances with the Minot Symphony Orchestra, the Aiken Concert Band, the Motor City Symphony Orchestra, the Oakland Symphony Orchestra (MI), and the University of Mississippi Symphony Orchestra. The Assembly Quartet was the inaugural performer in Conundrum Theater’s “Not So Classical” new music series in Columbia, SC and as a part of the Spartanburg Symphony Orchestra’s Chamber Music Series. In past years, Assembly has been featured in the Columbia Museum of Art’s French Impressionist Art/Music Collaboration, on South Carolina public radio, and regularly at meetings of the North American Saxophone Alliance, the International Saxophone Symposium, and the World Saxophone Congress.
Committed to furthering the saxophone quartet repertoire, this ensemble has commissioned and premiered works by Marilyn Shrude, Carlos Simon, Grace Baugher Dunlap, Andrew David Perkins, Om Srivastava, Ryan Todd, Martin Bresnick, Bill Ryan, Misha Zupko, Franco Donatoni, Frank Wiley, Marc Mellits, Kurt Isaacson, David Maslanka, Simon Fink, Benjamin Taylor, Girard Kratz, Sophocleous Charalambos and Peter Kay. The Assembly Quartet is a versatile ensemble, comfortable performing a wide variety of styles from orchestral pops to virtuosic avant-garde.
