They wanted music that was “emotionally affective,” Nylander said. They selected all the pieces with that in mind. “For this album we were trying to find a strong cohesion between the piano and saxophone.” Nylander said he was not interested in simply being an accompanist. “Especially with saxophone and piano, usually the saxophone dominates the soundscape a bit.” The concept behind the duo is a balance between the instruments “where both players were equal forces,” Heaney said. The album, “ Alchemy,” was recorded at BGSU in May, 2021 and released last October by Samek Music. … The whole thing came together quite naturally. He worked very diligently getting it all together, and I hopped on for a ride. “Josh was organizer of the business side of the project. The project was “very pie in the sky,” Heaney said. With a grant from the College of Musical Arts, they were able to shift gears and record the album instead. They had envisioned hitting the road for a tour, but COVID-19 killed that idea.
Those pieces ended up on “Alchemy” the first recording by Duo Aurous. The recital also included “Lacrimosa” by Marilyn Shrude, who was Nylander’s composition teacher. “In COVID we just didn’t know when we’d be able to play live again,” Heaney said.Įventually, they did come back together to perform it live on Heaney’s degree recital in April 2021, albeit for an audience of four, which included the saxophonist’s wife Mackenzie Heaney, a soprano who is also a BGSU student.
Heaney, who is a student in the Doctor of Contemporary Music program, was staying with his in-laws in Pennsylvania. Nylander was staying in Bowling Green completing his master’s degree in composition. When saxophonist Joshua Heaney and pianist Benjamin Nylander were working on the duo piece “Distances Within Me,” they ironically were a distance apart.
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