Anábasis is a Greek term that has three meanings: “ascent”, “journey within”, and “return”. They are found in the eponymous work by Xenophon (philosopher and student of Socrates) and in this work for tenor saxophone.

In the latter, the “ascent” manifests itself in an almost constant ascending expansion of the sound, through which a true “inner journey” is realized, here inside a saxophone which provides the musical material through its acoustic possibilities. The sound advances in a microscopic way, through minimal transformations of all the parameters (pitch, timbre, articulation, dynamics, density).

Thus an infinitesimal, slow and subtle heterophonic framework is created, which intensifies in the central part of the work, which becomes a small-scale compression of its totality. The last part presents a game with diffuse memory, memory faded by the passage of time. At this point, the work “returns” to its almost original state. But far from being a re-exposure, it is a timeless condensation of the whole expansive process previously developed.