Pinewood Saxophone Quartet

The period 1930-1970 was a golden era in Hollywood – not just for the studios, producers, screenwriters, directors, and stars – but for musicians too. The film industry having made the transition from silents to talkies at the end of the 1920s, Los Angeles became a magnet for many of the fi nest composers and players in the world, plying their trade in the new recording studios creating music for cinema. American composers from the New York musical theatre such as George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Harold Arlen came to Hollywood, bringing the Great American Songbook with them. European musicians including Erich Korngold, Franz Waxman, and Michel Legrand also arrived, bringing classical sensibilities, orchestral tradition, and an appreciation of American music too. Further north in Oakland, the French composer Darius Milhaud taught at Mills College, his list of students including not only those who went on to become leading 20th-century composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich, but also jazz pianist Dave Brubeck and songwriter Burt Bacharach. During the 1950s, the West Coast became the home of the “cool” jazz style of Brubeck and Paul Desmond, Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker, Zoot Sims, and Stan Getz. The Californian confluence of classical music, popular song, and jazz found a unique cultural expression in countless wonderful Hollywood film scores and songs, which this album explores and celebrates. Additionally, the Pinewood Saxophone Quartet project takes inspiration from the Hollywood Saxophone Quartet, a wonderful group which brought together four of the very best woodwind players in the Los Angeles studios between 1951-70. Their work together resulted in four fabulous LP recordings which included popular songs in quality arrangements, French classical quartet repertoire, and new commissions from Hollywood composers. This recording pays tribute to the HSQ’S remarkable legacy of classy playing and their contribution to the repertoire for saxophone quartet: Hooray for Hollywood, in more ways than one.