iridescent cobalt glow is a collection of 3 short pieces for saxophone quartet, composed of alto, two tenor and baritone sax.

During the composition of this piece I read an article advocating video games of the 1980’s, with their day-glo colour pallet and limited pixel count, as a means of escaping the often-bleak political and social backdrop of the times.

The author Keith Stuart recalls the ‘[…] painted azure blue skies that seemed to light up the whole arcade, bathing sallow faces in an iridescent cobalt glow.’

The phrase resonated with me and brought to mind, via a linguistic tangent, Miles Davis seminal album ‘Kind of Blue’.

The piece owes nothing to Davis’ music, nor am I comparing myself to him, but as a video gaming child of the 80’s I think of it as my 21st century take on ‘Kind of Blue’ – the cool blue wash of the jazz club lights replaced with the glow of smartphones and computer monitors.

“with iridescent cobalt glow, Jonathan Nangle’s artful yet affectionate take on both the graphics and colours of 1980s video games, whose three sections amount to a teasing entity.” – Richard Whitehouse, Gramophone Magazine, Chatham Saxophone Quartet, New Irish Music