SIGNUM Saxophone Quartet | Shaping Sound Collective
The Project
2027 is the year we will celebrate one of the greatest innovators in the history of music. It is in this spirit that the Shaping Sound Collective has conceived, in collaboration with the SIGNUM Saxophone Quartet, a programme inspired by one of Beethoven's most celebrated masterworks — his Fifth Symphony — tracing musical innovation from the 18th century to the present day.
This journey through the centuries begins with the instruments brought together on stage: strings (18th century), a saxophone quartet (19th century), and synthesisers (20th century). Nine instruments thus blend their sonorities to produce a new timbre, unimaginable when Beethoven set down the first notes of the symphony in 1805.
The programme features, alongside the Fifth Symphony in an original transcription for saxophone quartet and strings, a new work by Swiss composer, conductor and pianist Matthieu Mantanus: Beethoven 307. A "307 error" is the response a web server sends when a resource is temporarily accessible via a new URL — without the original disappearing. This is precisely what the composer does here: he redirects the Fifth Symphony to an uncharted address, at the heart of the 21st century, where its themes and rhythms — still very much alive — inspire instruments Beethoven never knew, and which continue to draw, two hundred years on, from his boundless creativity and inner power.
SIGNUM Saxophone Quartet
The SIGNUM saxophone quartet is anything but ordinary: four exceptional saxophonists who have known each other since youth and constantly reinvent themselves. A musical fusion where deep devotion to the sound of the classical string quartet goes hand in hand with a sincere enthusiasm for the rock classics of our time. Add to this an incomparable charisma that crowns the impressive and virtuosic skills of Michal Knot, Jacopo Taddei, Alan Lužar and Edoardo Zotti.
From the very first seconds of their performances, these exceptional musicians ignite a firework of emotion-laden music — marked by an insatiable curiosity for stylistic experimentation at the boundaries and an unwavering pursuit of the perfect ensemble sound. Whether original compositions for saxophone quartet, arrangements of orchestral works, baroque compositions or rock music — SIGNUM's unfailing love of music spans almost every era and genre. This masterful joy of playing is difficult to put into words. It simply has to be experienced.
Winners of several international competitions, the young SIGNUM saxophone quartet made their debut at Carnegie Hall in New York in 2013. The quartet quickly built on that success: as "Rising Stars" of the European Concert Hall Organisation (ECHO) in 2014/15, SIGNUM took to the world's great stages, where they have been very much at home for many years.
The SIGNUM saxophone quartet is regularly on everyone's lips through its quartet concerts and collaborations with other musicians. With star violinist Daniel Hope, the four not only shared the screen for the Arte TV format "Hope@Home", but have also made several joint stage appearances. SIGNUM also performs with Ksenija Sidorova, Sarah Maria Sun, Giorgi Gigashvili and Fazil Say. The quartet's orchestral repertoire is varied and constantly expanding — they recently premiered a new arrangement of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition by Jun Nagao for string orchestra and saxophone quartet; a new concerto by Avner Dorman is planned for the 2027/28 season.
The SIGNUM saxophone quartet has released several albums, including Echoes (Deutsche Grammophon, 2021). In 2024, SIGNUM presented their new recording Chameleon (Berlin Classics).
SIGNUM is a Selmer Paris artist and has been Ensemble in Residence at Bayer Kultur since 2024.
SIGNUM saxophone quartet thanks beltepà for the exceptional concert attire.
Matthieu Mantanus
Swiss conductor, composer, pianist and musical communicator, graduate of the Lausanne Conservatory. After early beginnings as a pianist — including as soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam — he turned to conducting, refining his craft in Rome under Giuseppe Sinopoli and in masterclasses with Jorma Panula and Gianluigi Gelmetti. Invited by Lorin Maazel to the Castleton Festival in Virginia, he became its Associate Conductor.
From 2009, he served as Principal Conductor of the Ravenna Symphony Orchestra, and collaborated with, among others, the theatres of Cagliari and Como, the Toscanini Philharmonic, the Pomeriggi Musicali in Milan, and conducted Opera College productions at the Venice Biennale Musica (2016 and 2019).
A passionate advocate for making music accessible, he presented five prime-time lecture-concerts on RAI 3 with his Jeans Symphony Orchestra, reaching nearly one million viewers per evening, and hosted an entire season of live broadcasts from Italian theatres on RAI 5. He is also the author of three books: Una giornata eroica (Feltrinelli, 2009), Beethoven et la fille aux cheveux bleus (Mondadori, 2016; École des loisirs, 2019) and Rossini! (Feltrinelli, 2018).
In 2013, he founded a production company dedicated to innovative and multimedia performances. This led to the creations Revolution!, Intimacy, BachBox and Baroque Reloaded, as well as the label JeansMusic Records.
His electronic work continued with the EPs Sound of Elements (2020), the orchestral suite This is No Mozart (2021, new version 2025), Nocturnes électroniques (2022), Wolfgang's Dream (2023) and BreakBachDance (2024), combining J.S. Bach, electronics, video and breakdancing — including a version for saxophone, electronics and video in 2025. In 2026, he composed the music for the children's production Miss Miette & Monsieur Croûte, and will premiere the cantata XIV Générations for choir, player piano, percussion, saxophone and electronics in late November.
Since 2021, he has directed the JeansMusic Festival in southern Italy, at the crossroads of classical, contemporary and electronic music. Returning to Aigle in 2020, he founded the Amis de la Musique d'Aigle et du Chablais in 2022, for which he curates the programming (www.amisdelamusique.ch), as well as the Shaping Sound Collective (www.shapingsound.org) with other artists from the Chablais region.
Shaping Sound Collective
Within the Amis de la Musique works an ever-evolving group of artists: "Shaping Sound" — meaning to shape sound, in the sense of creating it, but also of giving it form through other, more tangible or visible artistic expressions. The group experiments with a new approach to contemporary creation in the performing arts, bringing together different artists around an initial project so that they may collectively bring to life, through deep artistic dialogue, a performance made up of their works — all interdependent, yet capable of being presented in different forms or configurations.
The performance can thus become installation, book, concert, exhibition, film or live performance, reflecting a society in which the boundaries between genres and forms are increasingly fluid and irrelevant, and artistic exchanges increasingly cross-disciplinary. A new way of experiencing artistic creation in an interconnected, multimedia world.
The Shaping Sound Ensemble is a flexible-format ensemble of professional musicians who participate, under the direction of Matthieu Mantanus, in the collective's projects.
Versions du Beethoven project!
Ensemble version: 9 musicians (SIGNUM Saxophone Quartet + Shaping Sound Ensemble + synth/electronics)
Orchestra version: 5 musicians (SIGNUM Saxophone Quartet + synth/electronics) + string orchestra
Duration: approximately 60'
A concerto version is also available with orchestra, featuring only the work Beethoven 307 — a concerto for saxophone quartet, synthesisers and electronics (approximately 30') — with the remainder of the concert completed by, for example, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in its original version.
a Shaping Sound Collective production, featuring SIGNUM Saxophone Quartet
booking@shapingsound.org | shapingsound.org | signum-saxophone.com
