JSB:48 is all about The Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach. Spanning a ten year recording project by the Arcis Saxophone Quartet, the original Bach fugues in their version for saxophone quartet are complemented by newly composed preludes all inspired by The Well-Tempered Clavier. Beginning in 2020, the collection of 48 fugues and new preludes will gradually grow over the next ten years as a growing playlist (found on Spotify & Apple Music).

DIVERSITY

We believe there is so much more music to discover. Music that may not be so close to us at first, but is all the more exciting. We deliberately want to immerse ourselves in the most diverse worlds and take our listeners on this journey.

GENRE

The composers we commission come from a wide variety of genres. The basis will always be classical music, but we love diving into other worlds as well.

GENDER RATIO

Female composers are still underrepresented. We do not want to accept that and make it very simple: 50% of our composition commissions go to female composers.

CULTURES

We have divided the world into different earth culture parts. The new preludes are then distributed evenly among them. That challenges us and is a lot of fun when we are allowed to deal with music that works completely differently than, for example, classical Western music.

Repertoire Sample

Centerpiece:

J.S. Bach paired with new works by contemporary composers – Selection of newly-composed preludes paired with fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier

In addition, selections from:

Nikolai Kapustin – 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 82 

Dmitri Shostakovich – Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87

Leonhard Kuhn – Fugue & Loops