Danish Saxophone Quartet

The quartet was formed in 1986 and currently consists of: Oriol Pares - soprano saxophone, Chr Hougaard - alto saxophone, Lauritz Hædersdal Eller - tenor saxophone and Per Egholm - baritone saxophone. For many years now, the quartet has been specializing in the performance of contemporary music. On the two compact discs dedicated to the subject, the quartet unfurls a number of the more than one hundred and fifty different pieces of music which have been composed explicitly for the quartet.
These pieces display colors illuminating a myriad of nuances of saxophone timbres and modes of performance, with styles that range from intimate minimalism to super-complex structural music.
The group's second CD, with music composed by Per Nørgaard, Ib Nørholm and Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, was nominated for the 2000 Grammy Classical Awards in Denmark.

In addition to this energetic and creative engagement, the quartet has persistently been combining pieces of rhythmic music with the more strictly classical works in their concerts played all over the world.
For example, Argentinean tangos penned by the renowned composer Astor Piazzolla are also presented on a CD entitled Tango. The group has also played some of the new art-music, klezmer, and a number of endearing jazz arrangements.
The members of quartet have always been aficionados of Johann Sebastian Bach. Over the last many years, they have been playing extracts from The Goldberg Variations and The Art of the Fugue in their concerts. It goes without saying that J. S. Bach is one of the most important composers in European music history and these two monumental pieces offer testimony to the enormous capacity of his compositional efforts.

The quartet has toured in the USA, England, Scotland, Germany, France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Greece, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland.