Ballade Des Pingouins

French composer and student of Darius Milhaud, Pierre-Max Dubois was born on March 1st 1930. Although not as popular as his teacher, he was well respected and continued the musical ideas of Les Six, of which Milhaud was of course a member, into the second half of the twentieth century, even winning the Prix de Rome in 1955.

Dubois' music is a lot like that of Milhauds, light hearted, harmonic, melodical and texturally unusual. Many of his works are for woodwind, especially saxophone such as his Quartet for Saxophone in F which was premiered in 1962 or the Pieces characteristiques en forme de suite for alto saxophone and piano accompaniment.