Hailed by the New York Times as ‘brilliantly stylish,’ Pat Posey (he/they)
is a versatile saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist who has
performed as a soloist, recitalist, and orchestral musician in
the US and across the world.
Based in Los Angeles, he appears regularly with numerous orchestras including the San Francisco Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic, and has performed with musical luminaries such as James DePreist, Gustavo Dudamel, JoAnn Falletta, Alan Gilbert, Klaus Mäkelä, Anthony Parnther, and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Recent and upcoming engagements include performances in the US and Europe of concertos by John Adams and Jacques Ibert, solo and chamber recitals of the lost music of the Jewish Austrian American composer Edvard Moritz, and debut concerts with the National Symphony Orchestra among others. Past highlights include engagements with the Chicago Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Wild Up, a solo performance at (le) poisson rouge in New York City, solo recitals in Germany and Russia, and appearances at the Lincoln Center Festival and the BBC Proms in London. He is a founding member of the Los Angeles Reed Quintet (LARQ) and of the performance collective Le Train Bleu, and has appeared at Carnegie Hall with composers John Adams, Thomas Adès, Peter Eötvös, and Michael Tilson Thomas leading concerts of their own works.
Highlights of the lost 2020 season were to include performances of John Adams’ Saxophone Concerto in California, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic, chamber music with enSRQ, and debut symphonic engagements with the Oregon Symphony and Chicago Symphony among others. During the interregnum he created an extensive body of solo arrangements of orchestral standards, performed in his popular Neighborhood Pops Concerts series in biweekly concerts in five different locations around Los Angeles. He also returned to composing and improvising, creating a number of videos for YouTube and compositions including Hymn for solo tubax or bass clarinet, Blue Chaconne for solo alto saxophone, and Alto Quintet for five alto saxophones. Other pandemic projects include an original score commissioned by the Berkeley Symphony to accompany the reading of a children’s book by Thatcher Hurd and an album of processed bass saxophone improvisations for forthcoming release.
In addition to performing as a western classical musician, he has collaborated with Iraqi oud virtuoso Rahim Al Haj, creating arrangements for string quartet and other western instruments and appearing as a guest artist in concert in Muscat, Oman. He performs on an extensive collection of non-western wind instruments, including the rare North Korean double-reed instrument Jangsenap, and in 2009 performed as ocarina soloist with the YouTube Symphony in a livestream that has been viewed over 1.7 million times. In addition he performs on a wide range of non-standard western instruments including sopranino and bass saxophones, contra alto and contrabass clarinets, and tubax. His debut solo album they/beast, the first streamable album featuring solo tubax, will be released by Avie Records on November 3, 2023. He also appears as tubaxist on Jognic Bontemps’ score for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and Wild Up’s Julius Eastman anthology (vol. 3). He can also be heard as principal saxophonist with the Michael Torke Orchestra on the albums Time and Psalms and Canticles, the San Francisco Symphony’s recording of Charles Ives’ Symphony no. 4 with Michael Tilson Thomas, and an upcoming release from the Long Beach Opera of Anthony Davis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning opera The Central Park Five.