Dear Bach... The Apollo Saxophone Orchestra - composition by Barbara Thompson

Dear Bach... A video by Jon Hiseman, filmed on the last day of recording the new Apollo Saxophone Orchestra album 'Perpetual Motion' - 10 compositions for saxophone orchestra by Barbara Thompson. Shot in the concert hall of the Royal Northern College of Music, the acoustics of this marvellous hall greatly enhanced the orchestral sound of the 12 saxophones, under the musical direction of Rob Buckland and Andy Scott. 'Perpetual Motion' is released on Nimbus Alliance (NI 6200) and is available from Amazon.co.uk.

Dave Gelly, renowned jazz saxophonist and writer/broadcaster:
"If you just happened to hear this music, out of the blue, without knowing anything about it, would you instantly think -- "saxophones"? Fairly unlikely, I'd say, for a variety of reasons. In the first place, because you don't often hear twelve of them, from sopranino to bass, playing together; secondly, because it sounds more like several times that number of instruments; and thirdly, because the music -- original, absorbing and hugely diverse -- simply doesn't fit in with most people's idea of what saxophones do. And, to be fair, until quite recently it wasn't what saxophones did......
The only melodies the average person immediately associates with the saxophone are Take Five, Baker Street and Barbara Thompson's own haunting TV theme tune for A Touch of Frost. She is a leading pioneer of composing for the saxophone, and the remarkable Perpetual Motion is a major contribution to the ever expanding saxophone repertoire."