Hello 2026 NASA attendees!
Hello NASA 2026 conference attendees (and other admirers of the saxophone)!
I’m Shane Valle, composer and saxophonist based in Portland, Oregon: I write music that seeks evoke what is noble, tender, and good in each of us; I run the Portland Saxophone Ensemble and am the tenor saxophonist in the BARK Quartet.
For convenience, here are links to the NASA schedule.
Though I can’t be at NASA this year, you can hear two performances of my music at the conference:
The University of Tennessee Chattanooga saxophone studio will be performing Romp, a rousing opener (or closer!) for saxophone ensemble—3.5 minutes of high-energy fun. Friday @ 2:30PM Weigel in Auditorium.
Dr. Jessica Dodge-Overstreet is giving the premiere performance of blossom, behold, bruise, become—a piece for soprano saxophone and piano. Saturday @ 5:30 Recital Hall 120. What Dr. Dodge-Overstreet had to say about this work:
“blossom behold bruise become uses more modern compositional language, but is still tinged with nostalgia. This piece shows off the range of color a soprano saxophone can achieve and blends virtuosity with heartfelt expression. Composer, saxophonist, and urban planner Shane Valle and I also met during our student years in Oregon. Since then, his poignant writing style has matured and been featured on programs across the country. “This music is addressed to the child in each of us and hopefully, with its aspect of earnest tenderness, deeply soothes the parts of us that were in some way not able to fully blossom—because we were not enough or we were too much or not the right shape or had to take on too much too soon.” This piece represents our collective journeys toward self-actualization and inspires us to push forward through the difficulties of our lives and our time.”
And thirdly, below is a listing of my works written for saxophone - from quartets to saxophone choirs to reed quintets. If you’re liking what you’re hearing in my music and want to perform something from my catalogue or make something new together, shoot me a message through the contact form or message me on instagram @shanevallemusic.
Saxophone ensemble/choir
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9’ - SS/AA/TT/BB/Bsx
The phrase Breathe, Set, Play is a mantra for beginning saxophonists to recall the proper sequence for starting a note—take in air, set the embouchure (mouth) around the mouthpiece, let the borrowed air flow. It is a series of steps one undergoes to achieve a desired state or outcome. In this piece, play is that sought state—a sense of exploration, discovery, and wonder where time disappears. Version w/o bass sax upon request.
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18’ - SS/AA/TT/BB/Bsx
Four movements (1. Gloaming, 2. Midnight, 3. (dreams), 4. Morning). Musical character roughly traces pathway from dark to light, exploring depression, negative self-talk, and the chance for renewal. Language is tonal with no extended techniques needed. The last movement can stand alone in performance and lasts 7’30" if duration is a consideration.
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Romp (noun): high-spirited, carefree, and boisterous play.
A stand-alone arrangement of the central movement of After the Bell, a rambunctious scherzo that makes a great concert opener or rousing closer. -
13’ - SS/AA/TT/BB
Five continuous movements (fast-slowish-fast-slow-finale) tracking the highlights of a childhood summer. Musical character ranges from fanfare-ish to retrospective to spirited. Language is tonal with no extended techniques needed. There is also a version of the 3rd movement that is 3'30" and stand-alone called Romp. Playing only the last three movements would make an effective performance, shortening runtime to 8’30” if duration is a consideration.
Saxophone quartets
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13’ - SATB
Move With Me explores different relationships to movement. The first movement is a big ball of energy, a little chaotic, but Chaotic Good to be sure. The second movement is energy maybe too closely controlled and a little stilted as a result, but, through a different sort of movement, things eventually loosen and blossom, eventually getting somewhere important. And the third movement is a happy middle between joyful movement and structure—a grooving dance.
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11’/17’23’ (three performance configurations) - SATB
The question of how we all live together must address the balance between individual and community. The project of the last several decades has been expanding the primacy of the individual in the civilizational calculus resulting in a world-changing blossoming of rights and opportunities and a diversification of expression and perspectives. We’ve also grown more isolated, disconnected—reflected in the shapes of our cities, the orientation of our technology, and the tenor of our politics. At some point, we passed beyond a happy medium, which we are beginning to recognize—social isolation and depression are through the roof; civic fractiousness is at a fever pitch. Yet we are leaning further into the forces driving us all apart from one another. In this music is both grief and anticipatory grief. We’ve lost much—perhaps most importantly a sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves—and we seem on track to lose much more.
Movement 1 sees the social fabric taken to its breaking point. The piece opens with the ever-present question of balance (the musical source of all the material in the piece) and two ideas respond: the first a glowing embrace; the second a trite, if unsettling, march. As the two ideas encounter one another, we are brought to the center of the piece, full of the same hollow frenzy, horror, numbness, and dislocation that describes parts of modern existence today. Life now regularly features absurd juxtapositions of the mundane and the existential—mass killing and cat videos a nudge of the screen apart from one another. Such trivialization and commodification of human needs and experiences degrades our ability to tell what is important and our ability to care. This music receives a similar treatment, the existential juxtaposed with the trite, the absurd set alongside the sublime—all tossed in a blender, repackaged, enhanced, accelerated, piled upon, versions cast aside with frightening frequency until cycles simply overlap and we find ourselves lost in the storm.
Movement 2 gives us a chance to take stock of what’s been lost—pathways, traditions, institutions, land, and ways of life cast aside. There is no going back, but what might be ahead?
The opening of movement 3 is us at our most atomized. Abrupt, stilted utterances establish the musical picture. Extended solos for soprano and baritone mull over the original question and answers while the ensemble contends with traumas, phantom limbs, and misremembered and over-learned lessons, seeking a way forward.
Reed quintets
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7’30” - Ob./Cl./ASax/BCl./Bsn
The vigorous musical idea at the heart of the piece was sketched on the summer solstice. It contains all the energy and possibility latent in the 3 months of perfect weather that is summer in the pacific northwest. Amidst the irrepressible summer energy are moments of reflection - at the feet of a mountain, off to the side of an old friend’s wedding, watching a meteor shower streak across the Milky Way. These two moods contrast at first but find a way to coexist by piece’s end.
This piece recently received the Honorable Mention in the International Clarinet Association’s 2026 Composition Competition as well as winning Fivemind Reeds 2025 Call for Scores Competition.
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10’ - Ob./Cl./ASax/BCl./Bsn
Music from ballets of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev are consistently an inspiration to me. This suite is a kind pocket ballet, a selection of movements taken from an imaginary (or yet to be written…!) ballet score with major moments from an archetypal ballet story: I. Villian; II. Hero; III. Sidekick; IV. Conflict; V. Apotheosis. The reed quintet is a perfect canvas for this work as its members are the best at personifying distinct characters necessary to drive the drama of a ballet.
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11’ - Ob./Cl./SSax/BCl./Bsn
A collection of short characterful movements originally written in a couple of week’s worth of evenings squeezed between work and sleep. I. Wayfarer is an homage to the sci-fi book series of the same name by PNW author Becky Chambers, episodes of soaring heroism flanking a strange waltz; II. Late Spring evokes mixed feelings about the gloomy and soggy weather of my pacific northwest home; III. Talk Back is a moody groove passed around the quintet before traveling somewhere more pastoral; IV. Boss Fight is a short and high-octane finisher reminiscent of the final moments of playing a video game.