Marc Sabat

The fifth CD in the Canadian Composers Series is also the debut appearance on Another Timbre by the Jack Quartet. It features chamber music for strings by the Berlin-based composer Marc Sabat, whose compositions explore the world of Just Intonation. But, as Nick Storring argues in the booklet accompanying the Canadian Composers Series of CDs, “to fixate upon this aspect of his music conceals at least half of what makes it so beguiling and beautiful. From an aural perspective, what is most salient about his work is not the system itself but his fluency within it. Part of this is attributable to his deep insight and compassion surrounding performance. Prior to his shift from to Toronto to Berlin, Sabat was revered as a violinist, and in his Euler Lattice Spirals Scenery quartet one hears the fruits of his tireless exploration of pitch. But his music never comes across as a dry academic study. Rather his rich treatment of the string quartet as medium brings the listener into close proximity with the palpable joy Sabat experiences in discovering these sonorities. It's anchored in a reflective, unhurried temporality, but full of radiant blossomings of sound, wild sparkling eruptions in the instruments' uppermost registers.”