They were seven concerts in. The momentum was building, the music was tight, and the cracks were starting to show.
The original soprano didn’t want to meet weekly. Wanted to slow things down. Was already in another group. Wanted to do more contemporary stuff—niche rep, for other saxophonists. The rest of them? They were trying to build something else. Something for people.
Not long after the fight, they met up again—this time without her. Just three of them at Benny Boy’s Brewery, pressed up against the I-5, sipping house lagers and asking themselves a question they’d been dancing around for months: “Are we serious about this?”
Rachel joined a week later.
“She just… got it,” Joseph says. “No ego. Clear. Kind. Focused.”
They remember her joke. “You are forgiven,” she said, every time someone missed a note in rehearsal. It’s still funny months later. But also kind of profound. That was the moment Gold Line Quartet stopped being a project—and started becoming a band.
Isaac – The Realist / The Host
If you ask Isaac what it means to lead, he won’t give you a TED Talk. He’ll hand you a plate of vegetarian lasagna and start tuning his soprano.
“I’ve played in a lot of groups,” he says. “But I’ve never really had the chance to build one.”
A Stockton native with a Latin music background and a multi-instrumentalist hustle, Isaac came up under David Henderson of the San Francisco Saxophone Quartet. He’s used to grinding. Used to improvising—musically and otherwise. But Gold Line is where the classical side of him gets to take the wheel.
“In a sax quartet, soprano leads. And I play soprano. So this is my chance to explore that creative space, that leadership role, in a setting where people actually care.”
He’s also the one who usually hosts rehearsals. Thirty to forty-five minutes one way is standard. He’ll cook—mac and cheese, lentils, whatever works for the day—and the others show up, eat, tune, play.
You don’t really choose this kind of commitment unless something in you needs it. Isaac doesn’t say that out loud. He doesn’t have to.
Joseph – The Skeptic / The Composer
“This is probably my tenth saxophone quartet,” Joseph says. He’s not bragging. It’s just math.
Joseph David Spence has the résumé—concert halls in Beijing, Connecticut, Shanghai, and Fullerton; degrees from Cal State and Hartt; competition wins, premieres, credits. He’s worked with some of the best saxophonists and composers in North America. He’s seen how these groups form—and how quickly they can fall apart.
So yeah, he’s a little skeptical.
“But this is the longest I’ve stayed with one,” he admits. “That has to mean something.”
He arranges for Gold Line. Composes for it. Helps pick the rep. His fingerprints are all over the sound. But you won’t catch him pulling rank. His skepticism isn’t defensive—it’s protective. He’s seen what happens when people aren’t aligned.
“When you choose to memorize music,” he says, “you’re not just learning a piece. You’re investing time you can’t get back. If even one person isn’t all-in, it’s not worth it.”
With Gold Line, he believes it is.
Rachel – The Technician / The Funny One
Rachel didn’t move to Los Angeles to blend in. She moved here with a DMA in saxophone performance and a résumé full of chamber music gigs that most players dream about halfway through grad school. University of Oklahoma was her launchpad—where the saxophone scene is basically a ninja dojo.
“Everyone there plays at this terrifyingly high level,” she says. “It just made sense to fall in love with quartet music.”
But Rachel’s not trying to be the academic in the room. She’s the one cracking jokes in rehearsal. If someone biffs a high note, she looks over and deadpans: “You are forgiven.” It’s become a running bit now—somewhere between sacred and sitcom.
Technically, she’s the newest member. But no one talks about her like that.
“She makes us sharper,” Jacob says. “And also… looser? It’s weird. That combo’s rare.”
Outside the rehearsal room, she runs a matcha page on Instagram. Knows her way around social media. Understands audiences. Which, for a group like Gold Line, might be the most important skill anyone brings to the table.
“She doesn’t just play well,” Isaac adds. “She gets what we’re trying to do.”
She’s also vegetarian, so rehearsals at Isaac’s house have taken on a kind of lentil-forward energy. No one minds. The food is good. The vibes are better.
Jacob – The Dreamer / The One Who Has to Play
Jacob’s answer to “Why chamber music?” is brutally honest:
“I play in this quartet because I don’t have a choice.”
He says it with a shrug, but it’s not self-pity—it’s just the truth. He’s been at this long enough to know what the solo hustle costs. The time. The inconsistency. The endless grind of booking, prepping, hoping someone shows up. And he’s got a family. Music can’t come before that. But it still has to come.
“This format is how I stay sharp. How I stay in it.”
He’s the intense one. Shows up early. Stays late. Brings pancakes to rehearsal because they make things feel lighter. But when he talks about the group—what it could be—you hear it. The dream.
Walt Disney Hall. One day. That’s the target.
“I know it’s far. But it’s not impossible. Especially with this group.”
He’s also the one who throws around metaphors like: “When you get married, one plus one equals three. With a quartet, one plus one plus one plus one equals five.” It makes sense in context. Kind of.
And if you hang around long enough, you start to see what he means. The music gets bigger. The sound gets riskier. The stakes go up. It’s louder. More intimate. Something starts to grow that none of them could pull off alone.
That’s what Jacob’s chasing. Not perfection—momentum.
The Part Where Democracy Has to Mean Something
There’s no artistic director. No designated boss. No alpha.
Gold Line runs on a simple system: if it matters, they vote. And if they vote, it has to be unanimous. That’s not a rule they wrote down—it’s just how it has to be when you’re memorizing everything and committing real time.
“If one person isn’t all-in, the piece dies,” Joseph says.
They’re not talking about reading something down in a school ensemble. This is rehearse-it-for-weeks, perform-it-from-memory, build-a-show-around-it kind of commitment. And when that’s the bar, every new piece has a cost.
“We have to believe in it together,” says Rachel. “Otherwise we’ll never make it through rehearsal three.”
That belief doesn’t come out of nowhere. Repertoire selection is done slowly. Deliberately. Arguments happen. Sometimes someone’s favorite piece gets shelved for a while. But they’ve learned how to handle it: no yelling, no guilt trips, just a vote. If the room isn’t ready, the answer is no.
This same system helps in other places, too—like keeping the louder personalities from steamrolling the quieter ones. Or making sure the group doesn’t drift into abstract, saxophone-for-saxophonists territory.
“Isaac’s good at bringing us back to earth,” Jacob says. “Like, he’ll literally ask: where are we playing this? who’s listening? what’s the point? And we need that.”
Nobody’s here to be a martyr for the art form. They want to make great music—and be heard doing it. The democratic system is how they stay honest with themselves, and with each other.
And also? It keeps things moving.
Rehearsal Is a 45-Minute Drive and a Hot Plate of Mac & Cheese
Rehearsing in LA isn’t glamorous. It’s logistics. It’s traffic. It’s the existential weight of every Google Maps estimate saying “43 minutes, with no traffic,” knowing there’s always traffic.
Isaac’s house is the usual spot. He’s in host mode—lentils, vegetarian lasagna, mac and cheese with a little crisp on top. It’s not fancy, but it hits. Rachel’s vegetarian, so he cooks with that in mind. They all eat first. Then they play.
When it’s at Jacob’s place in Pasadena, the vibe shifts a little sweeter—sometimes it’s pancakes, sometimes cake. Once, someone brought leftover donuts. No one remembers who. Everyone ate them.
“We don’t rehearse cold,” Rachel says. “We eat. We talk. Then we play.”
It sounds casual. It’s not. They work hard. They drill sections. They stop mid-bar when things feel off. They bicker sometimes, sure—but it’s the low-stakes kind, like siblings fighting over the aux cord. The real arguments happen quietly, with eye contact and raised eyebrows. Then someone says, “You are forgiven,” and they keep going.
They don’t hang out all the time. They don’t need to. But the ritual of rehearsal—making the drive, breaking bread, locking in—that’s what bonds them. Not shared playlists or political alignment or being best friends. Just music, and the effort it takes to do it well.
“We don’t have everything in common,” says Joseph. “But we have the one thing that matters.”
He doesn’t mean saxophone. He means intention.
What Success Looks Like (Right Now)
They don’t all want the same thing.
Isaac wants paid work. Nothing glamorous—just sustainable. A way to lead, to create, and to survive doing what he loves.
Rachel’s chasing clarity. Playing Joel Love’s In Memoriam from memory, top to bottom, in front of a crowd that actually listens. Not for bragging rights—for meaning.
Joseph wants an album. A real one. Original compositions. Careful recording. Something that lasts. He’s done projects before. This one feels different.
Jacob wants Disney Hall.
He says it like a joke, but it’s not. It’s not even about the hall, really. It’s about the feeling of walking onstage knowing the group got there on their own terms—no shortcuts, no handouts, no compromises.
They’re not there yet. But they’re moving.
And that’s the real answer to why they chose this format. Not because quartet life is easier. It isn’t. Not because it’s profitable. It’s not—at least not yet. They chose it because something happens when the right four people walk into a room, tune to the same A, and start from silence. Something bigger than them. Something louder than one person could ever be alone.
One plus one plus one plus one equals five.