Portland’s all-women sax quartet performs music of Moondog

The Quadraphonnes, Portland’s all-women sax quartet, will perform the music of the eccentric artist Moondog at the Alberta Rose Theater on March 7. Moondog was a blind street musician in New York City who worked with some of the biggest names in music in the mid-20th century, including Philip Glass, Leonard Bernstein, Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman.

We’ll hear more about the show and get an in-studio performance from the quartet: Mieke Bruggeman on baritone saxophone, Chelsea Luker on alto saxophone, Michelle Medler on tenor saxophone, and Mary-Sue Tobin on soprano saxophone.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We end today with saxophones, four of them. The Quadraphonnes are Portland’s all-women sax quartet. They’ll be performing the music of the eccentric artist Moondog at the Alberta Rose Theater this Friday evening. Moondog was a blind street musician in New York City who worked or crossed paths with some of the biggest names in music in the mid-20th century, including Philip Glass, Leonard Bernstein, Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman. The Quadraphonnes join us now for a preview of their Friday show. Mieke Bruggeman, Chelsea Luker, Michelle Medler and Mary-Sue Tobin. Welcome.

All: Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Miller: Could you start us off with a song?

Mieke Bruggeman: Of course.

Miller: What are we gonna hear?

Bruggeman: We’re gonna hear just the four of us playing “Just the Two of Us.”

Mary-Sue Tobin: And this is in honor of Lundi Gras, because it’s a transcription off of a New Orleans brass band.

Miller: That’s the Monday before Mardi Gras?

Tobin: That’s today, yes.

[“Just the Two of Us” playing, by the Quadraphonnes – saxophone music]

Miller: That is the Quadraphonnes, Portland-based saxophone quartet, playing “Just the Two of Us” – although all four of them were playing it.

How did you all choose saxophones as your instruments? Michelle Medler, first. I mean, what is it about the saxophone that drew you in?

Michelle Medler: Well, it was actually the radio, of all things, when I was a kid in the ‘80s. And it wasn’t exactly a particular song, but it was like, “That’s the instrument I want to play,”

Miller: Because there was more sax in pop songs then, and you’d just hear it every now and then?

Medler: Yeah, and it was just out there. It drew me in, and I told my parents … it was like third grade, and we couldn’t do band until fifth grade. So I played violin for a year and then finally, finally I could get my saxophone.

Miller: And was it as good as you thought it would be?

Medler: Yeah. I just loved it and never looked back.

Miller: You’re still doing it, which says something.

Mary-Sue Tobin, what about you? Why saxophone?

Tobin: I had played piano since I was a little girl. Then they stuck me on oboe in junior high because my brother had left one and I wanted to be in the band. So when I got to high school, I really wanted to be in jazz band. There were too many pianists, and they don’t have oboes in jazz bands. So my band director, Greg Hall, who’s out at Aloha now, said, “Why don’t you play saxophone?” Same as Michelle, the minute that I got it in my hands, I never let go.

Miller: Was it easier than oboe? I’ve always heard that double reeds are just really hard.

Tobin: Well, for sure. I mean, they were trying to make me make oboe reeds and stuff like that, and I’m not a handy person.

Miller: You’re supposed to make your own reeds?

Tobin: Yes.

Miller: And now you can just buy them.

Tobin: Oh, that’s right, yeah.

Miller: Chelsea, what about you? Why saxophone?

Chelsea Luker: I should probably give credit to a local musician. My dad’s a guitar player, so I grew up with music. He played with musician Scott Franklin, who’s a tenor player. He used to play with Johnny Limbo and the Lugnuts. So, when I was about 9, I got to see him live. He came out, he had this shtick where he would wear a long trench coat and black sunglasses and have a lamp light hanging over him. It was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. So at that point, I had to play saxophone. I didn’t want to do anything else.

Miller: And Mieke, what about you?

Bruggeman: I give credit to both my sister and my grandfather. I had played piano, like Mary-Sue, and then when it got time to be in the band, I had flute for a year. But then, my sister was off in college, and she joined an all-female punk band called P.M.S. They wanted her to play saxophone, so she brought it home and she let me honk on it. It just never left my mouth since then. The sound of it really was just amazing.

Miller: What kind of saxophone was that?

Bruggeman: That was an alto sax.

Miller: So, we’ve got a variety of saxophones here. Could we hear a little bit, just so we can hear each voice? Maybe let’s go from low to high. Mieke, we can start with baritone, just so we can get a sense individually for where you each are in the saxophone world. This is the baritone:

[Mieke Bruggeman playing baritone sax]

Miller: Is tenor next? OK, this is Michelle Medler on tenor.

[Michelle Medler playing tenor sax]

Miller: Then we’ve got the alto next for Chelsea Luker.

[Chelsea Luker playing alto sax]

Miller: And soprano, Mary-Sue Tobin.

[Mary-Sue Tobin playing soprano sax]

Miller: How did you all connect? I mean, how did you become the Quadraphonnes?

Tobin: Mieke and Chelsea had gone to college in Miami and Arizona, respectively …

Luker: Tallahassee …

Tobin: And you only get to play quartet a lot in college. So as sax players, it’s super fun, cause you’re with your pals and you’re playing saxophone music; but then in the outside world, there’s not a huge demand for sax quartets, although there used to be. So, when they got to town, their teachers said, “Hey, it’s a small community,” the saxophone world. And they said “You two should look up some other players in Portland and if you want to do an all-female thing, go find some people.”

So, they stalked me. I was a professional playing in town in bands and they came to my gig. It was a rainy Tuesday night. I just was like, who are these people that are sitting here with the whole song … and then they came up and said, “Would you like to be in a sax quartet with us?” And I said, “Hmm, who are you?” [Laughter] Then they said, “Well, we’ll need a fourth,” and I had gone to PSU with Michelle, we were two of the very few female jazz majors at PSU at the time. So, I immediately thought of Michelle … and we’ve been together ever since. That was 20 years ago, I think, that we figured out.

Miller: And you said that it used to be that it was more common for there to be saxophone quartets. So, how do you find places to play, if it’s not the most popular assembly of musicians?

Luker: It’s been a journey, because we started out kind of playing classical music. A lot of times that’s string quartets that have been arranged for saxophone quartet, but there are quite a few pieces that are written for us specifically. So, we started playing in coffee shops. We did that for a while, and then we said “We’d like to play out more, let’s play jazz.” And we started playing in some more jazz venues. We said “We’d like to put on more shows, so let’s add a rhythm section.” We added a bass player and a drummer. We did that for a while, playing funk music. We sing as well. Then we added a guitar player and that got even more crazy. Now, we’ve slowly kind of come back to the quartet. We play often with a drummer, who will be with us at the show on Friday.

So it’s been an evolution and we just try to go with the flow, so we can play wherever we want to.

Miller: Mieke, let’s hear more about this upcoming show. It’s at the Alberta Rose Theater. As I mentioned, it’s based on the work, and really, this one album of this guy, Moondog. Who was he?

Bruggeman: Moondog was a poet and a composer. And he largely lived on the streets of New York. He was known as the “Viking of 6th Avenue,” because he donned a Viking helmet and a spear. I forget where I read it exactly. But he was mentioning, “So many people kept referring to me as Jesus,” because he had a really long beard. He was quite tall, and just to shirk that and poke fun at that, he donned this Viking attire. Also, he was a big fan of Nordic culture and mythology. So, it just kind of fit together.

Miller: How would you describe his music?

Bruggeman: Eclectic with a bit of whimsy. And also this really interesting combination of both a classical sound or approach, with a jazz sound or approach. You know, one of his primary and “favoritest” music forms is the canon, your basic “row, row, row, your boat,” where you start a melody, and then you have a second voice come in after that. He was really curious to see, how many layers of this can I build upon? And, what kind of counter-lines can I create? He was very strict about this compositional style of composing.

But then he would add more … maybe swung eighth notes, or a little bit of more of the jazz influence. He was also highly influenced by Indigenous American drumming. His father was a minister. They would travel around and end up on various reservations. He got to sit on the lap of some of the Indigenous Americans while they were doing their drum circles. So you hear that a lot in his music, this sort of heartbeat going all throughout all of the compositions.

Miller: Can you give us a taste for one of his songs you’re gonna be playing on Friday?

Bruggeman: We’re doing a quartet version of his tune, “Bird’s Lament.”

[“Bird’s Lament” playing, by the Quadraphonnes – saxophone music]

Miller: That is “Bird’s Lament,” originally from the album “Sax Pax for a Sax,” by the artist Moondog. We heard it performed by the Portland-based Quadraphonnes, a saxophone quartet, with Chelsea Luker on alto sax, Mary-Sue Tobin on soprano, Michelle Medler on tenor, and Mieke Bruggeman on baritone.

Mieke, I saw a review of the album, a line from when this album came out, by David D. Duncan. He said, “It sounded like a nostalgic big band on laughing gas.” [Laughter] What was the idea behind “Sax Pax for a Sax?” This is this album you’re going to be performing in its entirety with a bunch of other people on Friday.

Bruggeman: Correct. And by a bunch of other people, that means eleven saxophones, including bass saxophone and contrabass saxophone, piano, two percussionists and four vocalists.

So, “Sax Packs for a Sax,” there’s two elements to it. The first is the word “Pax,” which is his play on words of peace, as well as a wolf pack and how they travel in different numbers. So you won’t hear all 11 saxophones playing every single song. There’s going to be some variety with how many of the saxophones are playing in any given piece that we’re performing.

And then, the second element is that, when the saxophone was invented in the mid-1840s, one of the primary ways that its inventor, Adolphe Sax, tried to get it into the mainstream was to introduce it into military bands. Moondog wanted to take a different take at the saxophone and present the instrument as an instrument for peace, versus an instrument for the military.

Miller: So, you’re all very used to playing, each of you with three other saxophone players in this quartet. What’s it like to have 11 of you all playing at once, including an even lower voice than the baritone?

Bruggeman: Pure awesomeness. [Laughter]

Miller: Is it overwhelming, the wall of sound?

Bruggeman: I think I can speak for all saxophonists in that, yeah, just that sound is such a big full sound, and to have a full range from high, down all the way low, low, low, low, low is a really incredible feeling to be in that room.

Miller: There’s something about that song … and that came out in 1969?

Bruggeman: The album? The album actually was recorded in the early 1990s.

Miller: Oh, that much later?

Bruggeman: Yeah, but then it wasn’t released till the mid-1990s, I want to say 1997. And then he passed away a couple years later, I believe it was 1999.

Miller: That song, it sounds still very fresh today and it sounds like it’s a classic. I mean, it’s sort of both things at once.

Bruggeman: Yes.

Tobin: Well, that particular song was redone, remixed by a German composer who did deep electronic and classical cuts, Henrik Schwarz was his name. And he did a remix of that tune that we played, “Bird’s Lament.” So you’ll often hear it in coffee shops or hipster bars.

Miller: Advertisements …

Tobin: It’s also in a lot of British shows and British advertisements. So, if you look on Reddit, and you look for “Bird’s Lament,” they’ll be like, “Where have I heard that song before?” Maybe in an Australian commercial, maybe in a hipster coffee shop. But a lot of that is due to this remix that this German deep-mix guy did to it.

Miller: Michelle, what does it take for a group to stay together for 20 years?

Medler: It takes communication, it takes friendship, it takes, of course, ups and downs, again, communicating with each other – and we love each other. We have this in common, the saxophone keeps us together. It’s just a really cool journey. I mean, it’s been such a cool journey being ladies together in a group. This was the first time I was in an all-female band. I never thought much about the idea of it being that, and I just love it. It’s so nice to have that camaraderie together.

Miller: Chelsea, had you experienced that before, being in an ensemble with only other fellow women?

Luker: No, it’s almost the opposite. Usually, you’re the only woman, and still for a lot of us, the groups that we play in, other than this, we’re the only woman. It wasn’t really something we set out to do, either. It’s just that I had a mutual friend with Mieke, and once we got together, she was like, well, I know another gal that plays saxophone, and then she knew another gal. So it just naturally occurred.

Miller: Can we hear one more song that you can take us out on?

Bruggeman: Yeah, this tune is entitled “Jocasta,” and it’s by one of our favorite local composers, Andrew Durkin.

Miller: I just want to thank you all very much. It’s been great hanging out with you. Thank you.

All: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

[“Jocasta” playing, by the Quadraphonnes – saxophone music]

Miller: The Quadraphonnes are a Portland-based saxophone quartet. This is Michelle Medler on tenor sax, Chelsea Luker on alto, Mary-Sue Tobin on soprano and Mieke Bruggeman on baritone. They’ll be performing the music of Moondog at the Alberta Rose Theater this Friday evening.

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