There’s often been a whiff of pop about Michael Torke’s music, and that’s always been the composer’s intention.

“Modernism in classical music created a lot of music that was hard to listen to… dissonant… atonal… I believe that composers kind of lost their audience. I wanted to do something different. The antidote to that is immediacy… and what kind of music is the most immediate? – Popular music. Of course there’s many different kinds, but the idea of popular music is to be immediately appealing. In the mid 80’s, there was a dance music that was a precursor to hip hop. It would have a really strong beat and a nice bass line. I would transcribe some bass lines and some of the drum beats. Then apply my own pitches and my own procedures, so no one would ever hear the original inspiration. I felt what would be injected was kind of a rhythmic vitality in an in your face kind of thing. I thought it worked out well musically….”

Torke’s saxophone quartet, “July,” was composed in 1995.

“What fascinates me is that this act of translation seems to completely remove the original reference from my music; sometimes I can’t even remember what the original song was that inspired me and, if I do, it’s hard even to hear the connection. But what remains is the energy… Instead of single-mindedly exploring one color, as in earlier pieces of mine, the music now corresponds to an experience of time – the energy and heat we find in the month of July, as well as cooling breezes of repose that come, perhaps, in the evening.”

On the First of July, here’s Michael Torke’s “July.”