Around the Bend
for e-flat alto saxophone, percussion, guitar, and piano

Around the Bend was commissioned by and written for Flexible Music, an ensemble consisting of Tim Ruedeman, saxophones, Daniel Lippel, guitar, Haruka Fujii, percussion, and Eric Huebner, piano. I had been very impressed by their performances of works they commissioned from mostly young composers, and I wanted to write a piece that would showcase their liveliness, rhythmic energy, and ensemble virtuosity. The piece is a single movement, about ten minutes long, marked Capriccioso.

date: 2006
duration: 10:00
premiere: Feb. 6, 2006
Shea Center for Performing Arts, William Paterson University
Flexible Music

score

"In Link's Around the Bend, something surprising is always lurking, from exotic tambourine sighs to quickly shared fragments, dreamy piano lines and sudden outbursts."
—Donald Rosenberg, Gramophone

"Around the Bend by John Link combines 'grooving' rhythms with a quotation from Verdi's Falstaff."
—Daniel Ender, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik

"In the present new music milieu of countless oddly staffed ensembles, Flexible Music has one of the more exciting combinations of instruments and probably one of the most, um, flexible out there in terms of their ability to capture such a broad range of sounds and styles."
—Brian Sacawa, NewMusicBox

"Around the Bend has a cheerful mania."
—Josh Langhoff, Pop Matters