An Interview with Soprano Saxophonist Bhob Rainey

Many of the concepts, philosophies, and even extended saxophone techniques embraced by Bhob Rainey are ubiquitous in the world of free music. However, to call Bhob a free player, would marginalize the uniqueness of his sound-based concept.

During our interview he was kind enough to share his insightful soprano–centric thoughts on micro-tonaility, playing solo, and the impetus behind his eight-piece electro-acoustic ensemble, BSC, and his most recent book/album, MANUAL.


SN: It’s rare to find someone who plays the soprano saxophone exclusively. But your situation is even more unique since you play the curved soprano. What made you decide to play this type rather than the straight soprano?

BR: I had played a straight soprano for some time, but I was attracted to the slightly darker, less goose-y sound of the curved horn. Later, as I started working more with multiphonics and non-standard techniques, I preferred the resistance that the curve brings, as well as the flexibility of the more compact size. Ultimately, once I settled on the Yanagisawa, I stopped worrying about the equipment and focused more on making it work for me – as long as the instrument isn’t getting in the way, the music will happen. Anyway, I can’t really afford to be buying a bunch of saxophones and mouthpieces all the time.

SN: I know that you studied microtonal music with Joe Maneri while at NEC. Were you already into micro-tonality before you moved to Boston?

BR: No, I really didn’t know much about it. I was interested in various post-tonal approaches, from Harmelodics to serialism to spectralism, but I hadn’t encountered much music that was specifically micro-tonal.

SN: As we all know, playing notes from the 12 tones of equal temperament (12 TET) is a challenge to play in tune on the soprano. How did you go about learning to playing 72 TET notes in tune?

BH: I started by singing. I would sit at the piano and find the “middle” between two half-steps. When I felt that I had that sound internalized, I would move to smaller intervals. Eventually, I got some scores by Joe, Ezra Sims, and Julia Werntz and sang excerpts from them – very slowly! I would compose my own melodic phrases – just short pieces, like a sketchbook – to get a feel for navigating melodies and rhythms in this “pitch continuum”. I suppose I was trying to discover the music that was native to this particular division of the octave.

When it came time to play micro-tonally on the saxophone, I decided that I wouldn’t consult any fingering charts. I let my ears guide me, and my fingers eventually found their way. It was, in a sense, like learning a new instrument, and the process reinvigorated my interest in the saxophone. There was a certain impossibility to playing this music; I couldn’t see where it would lead. I was attracted to this unknowing.

In the process of expanding the tuning of the instrument, I was also encountering all sorts of interesting timbres. The saxophone, being conical, reacts in non-linear ways to changes in fingerings, and these timbral shifts were extremely compelling to me. So, I began working systematically with timbre as well as pitch. Of course, multiphonics were popping out left and right, causing this crazy intersection of micro-tonal melody, harmony, and timbre.

Meanwhile, because Joe had planted the idea in me that alterations in tuning would cascade into alterations in every other musical component, I was trying to be extremely open to what these sounds and melodies wanted to do. I didn’t want a catalog of techniques that I then threw into any old music to make it exotic. So, I moved slowly, and I listened. I kept writing fragments of music, and I also let the sounds lead me where they seemed to want to go. It was like an exchange between intention and surrender, which, for me, became a rather productive approach to music-making.

SN: Did you find it made your pitch better overall? It seems that after playing the 72 TET chromatic scale, the 12 TET chromatic scale would be a piece of cake?

BH: Sure, but it also makes playing equal-tempered music in real-world situations kind of frustrating. You might want to sharpen a fifth just a little bit, but if there’s a piano in the group, you know it isn’t exactly going there with you.

SN: When listening to the way that blues players use micro-tonality, they seem to be using these non-Western tones to make their music more expressive and soulful. However, when I hear players with more of a European classical aesthetic, it can often sound the contrary. Do you think presenting micro-tonality in such a sterile context gives it a bad rap as being music that’s cold and over intellectualized?

BH: I think that maybe the term "microtonal" is enough to make people feel intellectually belittled. I could refer to a style of music that uses "functional modality" as its harmonic system, and most of the Earth's population would immediately lose interest despite the fact that I'm talking about pop music. Similarly, you mention blues players, few of whom I can imagine considering their music to be "microtonal." They may be engaging viscerally with the whole sound, leading them away from equal temperament now and then, but they aren't playing quarter tones in any practical sense.

So, is there terrible microtonal music out there? For sure, but I don't think that coldness or intellect are chiefly to blame. Maybe the intellect takes over (or seems to take over) when that visceral connection is lost – when one forgets about sound in space and time and how that sound reaches ears and minds. But when that connection is maintained, can't coldness be emotionally powerful? Can't intelligence inspire?

SN: You seemed to have made a switch from being a micro-tonalist to a sound artist. Or do you feel that your sonic vocabulary is just an extension of microtonalism?

BR: I don’t think much about being micro-tonal, anymore, or about being a sound artist. For the most part, when I make music, I’m thinking melodically and structurally (of course, harmony and rhythm are integrated in this thinking). This is pretty basic, music stuff, until you get over the idea of melody as a set of notes of specific durations that follow one another in time. The way I see melody (and maybe I render the word somewhat meaningless when I use it this way), it can be a succession of timbres or dynamics or envelops or silences; it is basically a set of sonic events that are both discrete and interdependent, creating the illusion of larger events. And, although these sonic events succeed one another in time, they can bring different time-senses into that linear procession – a “weathered” timbre can have a weighty past; a weak dynamic following a strong one can evoke a deep lapse; a crescendo may be entering the present tense while a decrescendo might invite reflection on previous events; etc. If there is one thing that keeps me interested in making music, it is probably this play of times-within-time.

SN: I’ve often said that most players end up being musicians or artists. Musicians are those who pursue a career, and artists being those who pursue a musical vision. And there’s overlap, of course. How do you see yourself?

BR: I’m just someone who is interested in reality and who happens to have had a decent musical education. I mostly want to encounter significant ideas and smart people, and music has been a fundamental way for me to do that for most of my life.

SN: I was once asked the question of why so many soprano players like to play solo? What is your take on it?

BR: It’s probably because no one wants to play with them.

Seriously, it’s probably more to do with the type of person who becomes a “soprano player”. Unless you’re planning to play sickly sweet melodies with a lot of reverb, you’ve probably chosen the soprano because it is odd, difficult, and less historically codified than the other saxes. And you probably have some issues that you need to work out on your own. The solo setting allows you to do that with a certain amount of clarity.

I know that I became interested in playing solo when I became interested in (Anton) Webern specifically, the idea that maybe every note he wrote was of the utmost importance. It’s hard to improvise with someone else and have that degree of weight to each sonic event. So, I tried it on my own. It’s still hard.

SN: Are there any special things you do to prepare for a solo saxophone concert?

BR: In general, I just try to stay in shape. Ideally, I like to have a good amount of time in the venue to get used to the quality of the space. Solo or not, at an improvised performance I am making music in a real space at a real time for real people, and I’m trying to be highly aware of the idiosyncrasies of that environment.

SN: Who are some of your influences on the soprano? I imagine most of your influences extend far beyond your instrument.

BR: Yeah, that’s tough. If I had to be honest talking about soprano players that have influenced me, I’d have to mention Jan Garbarek, and I don’t want to mention Jan Garbarek. I’ve worked with some great musicians who have influenced me more than any signpost sax players, but you could list the typical sax heroes and be sure that what they did matters to me.

SN: When I listen to Jan Garbarek, I hear someone who has mastered the art of creating a musical experience for the listener just from his sound. What was the biggest lesson would you say you learned from him?

BR: I think that's a great observation and totally spot on. My attraction to Garbarek was not all that different from my attraction to Musique Concrete (a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource). It was about how much a single sound can convey – not merely a note within some continuum of other notes, but a vast expression of velocity, pressure, space, tension, time, etc. I wanted to be able put forth, with a single gesture, something quite complex, and, for better or for worse, Garbarek opened some doors to that possibility on the saxophone.


SN: What was the inspiration behind BSC? Did it happen organically, or did you decide one day that you wanted to form a band with these particular musicians?


BH: It was a little bit of both.

First of all, these musicians had been working together in various groups for a few years before the BSC was formed. We were all friends and were all sharing common musical goals. Meanwhile, throughout the greater improvised music world, there were occasionally efforts to put together large ensembles, often in line with a utopian view of "free" improvisation. Typically, these large ensemble performances played out in one of two ways: 1) totally "free" and a complete mess, or 2) loosely structured with cues or texts or scores that allowed for some improvisation but kept things reined in. The problems with 1) are fairly obvious, and generally the satisfaction derived from such endeavors was limited to them being "interesting" and "challenging". The problem I had with 2) was that it really was moving out of the realm of improvisation and into indeterminacy.

I have no problem with indeterminacy, but a question was being left unanswered: is it possible to overcome (or at least mitigate) the pitfalls of large ensemble improvisation without a composition, however indeterminate, coming to the rescue? Could formal and compositional techniques be internalized in such a way that they could be deployed with the same spontaneity with which improvisers deploy the sounds on their instruments? These weren't new questions, really, but I wanted to put them to the test. I also wanted the possibility of making denser music through improvisation.

So, since this group of people in Boston had developed a fresh kind of music together, and since we were friends and could handle real criticism of each other's work, it seemed that the possibility for dealing with the challenges of large ensemble improvisation was presenting itself. I had a clear idea of who I wanted to be in the ensemble, and I called Greg Kelley to tell him about it. As it turns out, he had just booked a gig with nearly the same people. Clearly, something was in the air.

SN: With your book/album, MANUAL, what made you decide to put these two things together and not sell them separately? Did you every worry that one would negate the other, or just the contrary?

BH: A major impetus for putting the book together was to plant the seeds of a practical, empirical discourse on the music we had been doing, to foster a way of talking about it that was insightful and accurate but not too riddled in jargon. I wanted the possibility for the book to be put to use, not only to make more music but to make other things – other art, other communities, other relationships, and other approaches to listening. I wasn't at all worried about this somehow destroying the mystery of the music. I knew that it could only enhance the listening experience, make it deeper, open up unexplored orientations to the pieces. And the music could only clarify or illustrate the ideas being worked out in the book.

SN: In closing. Is there any advice you’d like to offer up and coming soprano saxophonists looking to follow a similar path?

BR: Don’t do it! And, if you’re compelled to ignore that advice, Do it! And, while you’re at it, surround yourself with people who challenge and frustrate you, people who will call you on your schtick. It is far too easy to get caught up in your ability to do something well, but most people ultimately won’t give a shit about that – they’ll want you to reveal something great. Don’t let your efforts get in the way of that revelation.



No Idea Festival 2008 Bhob Rainey, Greg Kelley, Sean Meehan from no idea festival on Vimeo.

Bhob Rainey - A Desert of Consolation (from Two Bites of a Bitter Sweet) from Bhob Rainey on Vimeo.

Bhob Rainey’s Equipment:

Instrument: Curved Yanagisawa Gold Soprano











Mouthpiece: The Missing Link (custom)













Ligature: Vandoren Optium
















Reed: Vandoren Java 3

An Interview with Soprano Saxophonist Joe Giardullo

Soprano saxophonist Joe Giardullo, who resides in Woodstock, NY, was gracious enough to grant me an interview, sharing his illuminating thoughts on being a soprano saxophone specialist, finding one's own path, and what it was like to work alongside soprano master Steve Lacy. I first learned of Joe back in 2005 after reading a review of his wonderful solo soprano saxophone recording, No Work Today: Nine for Lacy. I have since been following him closely, checking out various recordings, YOUTUBE videos and numerous articles. 

 Finding someone who has decided to make the soprano his main instrument, even in this day and age is a rarity, which is why I was very curious to find out what lead him down this road less travelled. 

SN: So Joe, what was it that did it for you that made you decide to become a soprano specialist? And when did it happen?

JG: I was a tenor player exclusively until about 1974, when I got my first soprano ( a vintage Conn curved soprano). I just liked the sound and the range of it and when it was damaged in a fall, I was lucky to find a great silver King horn. That was my horn for more than 25 years. As I became more and more influenced by the music out of the AACM, I found myself more and more turning to the soprano instead of the tenor. Then, when I stopped performing in 1981 and fell into a 10 year hiatus from performing, I still played my soprano and worked on my music privately. But I had no intention to return to the life of an improvising musician, so I played it because I loved to play it. That's it. When I then returned to performing and touring again beginning in the early 1990s, I was really only a soprano player. It chose me, actually. 

SN: Once you made the commitment to make the soprano saxophone your voice, what were some of the hurdles you were confronted with--technically and musically speaking? 

JG: I didn’t recognize any real hurdles, although they were there, I’m sure now. I had no agenda and I wasn’t looking to be somebody’s soprano player. I just developed my music and, without really planning it, my voice and, more importantly at the time, my vocabulary on the soprano. I was much more interested in the musical vocabulary. My sound was my sound, and I am a firm believer that you only need as much technique as you require to achieve what you want to achieve. 

SN: You state in your bio that you owe “an eternal debt to Steve Lacy.” What exactly do you mean? What influence did Lacy have on you musically and personally? 

JG: There were two modern soprano players that I was aware of: Coltrane and Lacy. I never consider Coltrane a soprano player. I just thought that he played a soprano sometimes and it was beautiful. But Lacy WAS the soprano and he had an intriguing and mysterious musical language as well. There was something more cerebral and less dramatically emotional in his music and I was drawn to that for some reason. And it was his early sound, with Gil Evans for instance, that I just loved. And I loved that he didn’t play in the “bebop” style. I was never very interested in that music and Lacy seemed to be on another path that was rigorous and powerful. I owe him a great debt for the path he walked and the example he set, both as a player and as a person. 

SN; When did you first meet Lacy?

JG: I had only met him for a minute after a concert around 1993. There was no conversation, just a “thank you” from me for a beautiful duet performance with Irene Aebi. So, when I was contacted in 2003 and told that Steve wanted to invite me to perform with him for 4 days in Montreal, I was rather stunned. I didn’t think he knew anything about me or my music. I was able to work out my schedule to get from Paris to Montreal in time, which almost didn’t work out. And the first thing he did, at a workshop at McGill University was say to me “let’s play a duet”. I had Steve playing 6 inches from my ear as we blew soprano duets for a long time. But it was the concluding concert some days later that really changed a lot for me. We had spent 4 days talking soprano, trading horns and mouthpieces and just being deep in the music. He was open and very interested to know about my work and ideas. At the conclusion of the final performance, I was standing on stage speaking with some members of the audience when Steve returned to the stage from the dressing room. He walked up to me and said “ Man, I want to tell you that you sound great.”. He hadn’t commented on my playing at all for 4 days, until that moment. I said it was kind of him to say that. And then he got this very serious look on his face and said “Kindness has nothing to do with it. You don’t know how seldom I am able to say that. You sound really great.” 

SN: That must have been an overwhelming feeling? 

JG: I can’t tell you how that just shook my world. I play a strange instrument with a strange sound and vocabulary and while I’ve had people like what I do, I’ve never had a soprano player tell me that, ever. The coda to that happened about 4 months later when I went to hear Steve’s band in NY, just a few months before he passed away. I could only stay for one set and I didn’t get a chance to say hello before the gig started, so afterwards I walked over to him. He was standing offstage speaking with Danilo Perez as I approached, and he said to Perez “I want you to meet a real soprano player”. It still gives me chills to think about it, really. What Steve showed me, without saying it, is that there is a path. We need to be able to recognize it, first, and then to follow it. And our paths are personal. We are not here to do what has already been done. And he recognized that I was on a path, that it was a serious one and that it was solid and real. It was a kind of blessing, in a way. 

SN: When playing the soprano, one is constantly thinking about sound. What musicians or styles of music were important in shaping your sound conception? 

JG: I was really influenced by trumpet players early on, for some reason: Don Cherry and Leo Smith are the two most important in those days. My King soprano had a trumpet-like clarity too, not an oboe-type sound. That all changed in 2004, after my time with Steve but things were starting to change just before I worked with him and was directly exposed to his knowledge and spirit. I was hearing things differently and, knowing that the path goes where it must go, I followed. I’ve never been put off by change. I’m not necessarily happy when things change but I’ve been embracing change all my life. It doesn’t put me off at all. I was hearing a more complex sound, warmer at its core but much more omni-harmonic than before. I had returned to listening to the music that really fired me up and rediscovered some things. That music was again the music of the AACM and others on that same path: AIR, CIRCLE, The Revolutionary Ensemble, Leo Smith, Braxton and more. 

 

SN: You also state in your bio that during a five-year period you owned more 25 sopranos. Being someone who has only owned one, please describe to me what that was like. More importantly, how did it get to that point? 

JG: Well, there’s that “change” thing again. The King was too raw for what I was now hearing. And, I really wanted to get some modern keywork too. I had been dealing with 1926 keywork and fingerings for a long time. So, I set out to play some horns. What I found was that I liked a lot of them but, after a short period, discovered what was missing in each, in terms of what I was after. I had never owned a Mk VI before, so I started there. I liked them but they were lacking something, especially after coming from an amazing King horn. I would buy a great Mk VI, play it for a few weeks and then sell it. I did that with more than 25 horns. It was kind of ridiculous but I could manage it and it made the investigation a lot easier than going around to play the few sopranos in NYC then and now. But it turns out I really learned a lot about the subtle differences in all these horns. That became very useful when I began making mouthpieces, so now I’m kind of glad it happened. The ones I remember are several Selmer VI, Series I, II and III, Buffet S1, Yanagisawa S6, S800 (2 of them) , the solid silver model, a Yamaha 62R, Borgani (straight and curved), SML, King Marigaux, Conn, Buescher (curved, straight gold plated, straight silver), Borgani (straight and curved), Amati Kraslice, B&S, Jupiter, Cannonball, Martin Handcraft, Rampone & Cazzani, King saxello, CE Winds, Keilwerth, Couf, a handful of Chinese horns. 

SN: It’s been my observation that soprano saxophonists tend to think outside the box, having an experimental and eclectic musical aesthetic. Do you agree? If so, why do you think that is the case? 

JG: There were so few role models in my day. There are so many more now. I really had no idea what I was supposed to sound like. I discovered my sound, I didn’t set out to “make it” my sound. I’m still discovering it, actually. Today, there are so many more opportunities to have some teacher or other get in the way of discovery, all in the name of education. Nobody got in my way. There’s a downside to that, of course, but the upside has been so much more important to me. There are too many people ready to say ‘you can’t do that” now, in terms of creative music. It’s built into the curriculum at schools and it can just destroy any spark of individuality, which is what I think we all love about creative music. Back when I began playing soprano, there was no one to ask, so once again, I watched for the path and, when I recognized it, I took it. Now, here I am. It’s been a long, strange and wonderful trip, I must say. But yes, I do think that many soprano players are idiosyncratic and self-directed. Perhaps they don’t start out that way but it’s easy to end up there, isn’t it? 

SN: One last question. What advice would you give aspiring young saxophonists who might be looking to follow a similar path of being a straighthorn specialist? 

JG: I can’t improve on what Steve always said: “Don’t go to school!” But, in this day and age, that is almost unavoidable, so I will add this: we don’t make the music; the music makes us. If you listen to what is inside you and you’re honest with yourself, you’ll find the path. You may not like it but you really don’t have a choice. You are who you are, after all. And that is what we are here to discover, I think. And don’t believe anything you don’t know to be true. When someone tells you that you sound great, hear it and be thankful for the compliment, but don’t believe it. And when they tell you that you sound awful, take it the same way. Accept it but don’t believe it. Only believe what YOU know to be true. After all, this isn’t about them, it’s about you. You may not know that now but you will find out before it’s all over. And, don’t expect the phone to ring with gigs. You have to make your own path. Gil Evans heard Lacy playing a Dixieland gig as a teenager and called him a few years later to be the lead voice in a tentet. I don’t think that’s happened since then, in 1956. 

SN: Is there anything that we did not cover that you would like to add?

JG: There is a thing I refer to as ‘the art spirit”. It’s that “thing” inside that compels someone to create. It isn’t a matter of choice at all; it’s a necessity. If you are playing the soprano and you don’t have that “art spirit”, then you can work on any aspect of playing and it is all the same. But when you discover that “art spirit”, it will be letting you know what you should be doing in terms of technique and development and direction. It may not be what you want to do, but it is exactly what you MUST do. Don’t ignore that voice. It’s the real you. Say hello.

 

Upcoming Joe Giardullo appearances: April 1-13, 2012: 

The Stone, NYC for ICTUS RECORDS Festival, with Andrea Centazzo, Roberto Ottaviano and others.Various nights and configurations. 

May 20-28, 2012: 

Solo soprano tour in Poland, various venues in Warsaw, Wrezsnia, Poznan, Krakow (tba). 

June 13, 2012: 

 THE VISION FESTIVAL, NYC with Joe McPhee, Warren Smith, Roy Campbell, among others: AT PLAY IN THE GARDENS OF HARLEM, dedicated to Clifford Thornton. 

July 18-29, 2012: 

 Puglia, Italy with Andrea Centazzo, Roberto Ottaviano, and others. Various venues.

Latest recordings: THE WAY, Volumes 1 & 2, with Andrea Centazzo on ICTUS RECORDS. 

Joe Giardulla's equipment: Couf Superba 1 soprano (1979)

Sopranoplanet Missing Link .088 Marca Superieure # 1 1/2 and #2 reeds Vandoren Optimum ligature For more information about Joe, please visit www.sopranoplanet.com

The Art of Solo Saxophone: Part I

A solo saxophone jazz performance can be a challenge of the highest degree for the performer as well as the listener. And it’s certainly understandable. Even though it’s just one person on stage, we naturally want to hear melody, harmony, rhythm, variety, tension and release, clarity, and all of the other things we take for granted with groups of a more conventional size.

As someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about these things, here are three (3) suggestions that might help your solo outing go more smoothly.

1. Be prepared

I’ve found that the best way insure that most, if not all of the aforementioned things are realized is to be prepared. I always say that you have to know the material well enough that you smoothly recover from your mistakes. Nothing kills the momentum of a solo performance, especially playing a wind instrument, then playing that noticable "clonker." Nothing goes unnoticed when playing solo. Everything is subject to micro-scrutinization. When playing with a rhythm section, covering ones tracks after a fluff or clonker is easy to do. Often times you’re the only one to notice. When playing solo, however, that cracked or out of tune note can jump out at you like the boogey man on Halloween.

2. Know when to move on

Another important thing to remember is knowing when to move on to the next idea once you’ve made your point. Knowing when to stop is can be the key factor in whether or not a tune comes off great or just OK. My concerts and recordings tend to flow much better when the pieces are more compact. This can mean not fleshing the melody out too long or soloing too long. When you’re playing alone there’s natural tendency to want to overplay to make up for lack of any accompanying instrument. But oddly enough, that’s actually to time to exercise restraint and become more selective with your ideas.

When I’m preparing material for a live concert or recording, I often record myself and listen back for what I call the “bored factor.” Meaning, at what point does this start to get boring. Typically it’s when I play too long, spend too much time on one idea, or spend too much time in the same sonic space, that the b-factor starts to set in. I’m usually pretty amazed at how much of a difference 45 – 60 seconds can make. When playing solo, the version that’s 3:20 in length can seem like eternity compared to the 2:40 version.

3. Think like a story-teller

When it comes right down to it, solo playing is comparable to being a great storyteller, or even a joke teller, for that matter. If you study stand-up comics, every second of their routine is accounted for. In fact, music and comedy are two mediums that are both about controlled chaos. Sometimes it’s just the impression of being spontaneous and totally in the moment. If you hear a stand up perform his or her routine a few nights in a row, you’d be surprised at how little of it is off the cuff. Even those seemingly in the moment verbal exchanges with hecklers are typically from their expansive arsenal of insults and comebacks.

Like great musicians, great comics have impeccable timing and pacing. And when pared with equally great material—which can be jokes or a musical vocabulary—the results can be incomparable. That’s why great comics like Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld can walk on stage with just a microphone and have you on the edge of your seat more than multi-million dollar Hollywood blockbuster movie. Or great musicians like Sonny Rollins or Steve Lacy can walk on stage just their saxophones and take you on a musical journey more exciting than listening to an 18-piece big band. Clarity and vision can go a long way in the world of improvisation.

Exploring the Soprano's Basement

One of my favorite books for learning about jazz history and to get a quick dose of musical inspiration is Steve Lacy: Conversations by Jason Weiss. This book is a collection of Steve Lacy interviews where he talks about life, music, and most times the soprano.

Here's one excerpt that I found particularly enlightening where he talks about the bottom register of the soprano.

"The main disappointment is that hardly anybody has developed the bottom of this instrument. I must be the only one that’s really opened up the bottom. I’m waiting for somebody else to really have founded something downstairs. That’s perhaps the most interesting part of the horn, the most beautiful part, it’s most pleasant part.”

I couldn't agree with Lacy more about this. The lower register of the soprano is without a doubt the most neglected part of the instrument, second only to the altissimo. In general, this area of the saxophone is not considered part of the instrument's practical range--which is understandable with the larger members of the saxophone family; melodies and lines played on those instruments tend to sound muffled down there. On the soprano, however, this neglected area is the warmest part of the horn.

Most of us, myself included, are influenced by Coltrane's approach to the instrument, who favored the higher register, as he did on tenor. Which is great, mind you, for a certain thing--mainly intensity and cutting through the rhythm section. Intensity, however, is only a small part of what the soprano is capable of. To get to the instrument's real beauty, you have to go down stairs to the basement, so to speak. As you find with most basements (If I may keep this analogy going), it will be dirty, cluttered, and unsettling in the beginning. But once you clean it up you will discover a new place of comfort.

I suggest starting off spending a good two weeks only practicing melodies and your musical ideas only using the notes between Bb1 (low Bb) - Bb2. It's uncomfortable in the beginning, but after a few days you start to find your way though the dark, so to speak.

One of the things I like to do is practice Charlie Parker's tune "Now's the Time" in the key of Eb concert. This puts the melody right in the very bottom of the horn. You can do this with any melody, but this is a good place to start.

In the words of President Obama, "Real change happens from the bottom up."

Steve Lacy Re-Imagined

Steve Lacy was probably one the most prolific and idiosyncratic composers in jazz. He has made over 200 recordings with numerous ensemble configurations from large chamber groups, with and without text; to solo saxophone, with and without text.

One of my favorites is “Bone.” I first heard Lacy play this piece solo on his CD, Snips:Live at Environ. It was part of a eight-part suite called the “Tao Suite.”

It’s pretty common knowledge that Lacy was heavily influenced by Monk, but on this piece it’s pretty apparent, to me, anyway. If you were to compare “Bone” to the first two bars of Thelonious Monk’s composition “Thelonious,” you can definitely hear the similarities and influence. Of course, for the bridge, they each travel their own unique paths.

Lacy was also the consummate minimalist, as a composer and improviser—a few notes, a few chords, and lots of possibilities. Which is why his tunes are ideal for re-imagining. Especially for me, since I’m into always having the melody present--whether it’s playing it as a motif during my solo, or using it as an interlude.

My initial arrangement of this tune was for a gig with Dave Liebman, with two sopranos, bass and drums. However, in this video clip of my concert at Smalls Jazz Club with Ethan Iverson on piano, Gregg August on bass, and EJ Strickland on drums, I had the piano play the 2nd soprano part.

I’m looking forward to exploring more of Lacy’s stuff in the future.

Four (4) Schools of Solo Saxophone Playing

Since I began exploring this path of playing in the unaccompanied format almost 10 years ago, my style of solo saxophone playing has come to integrate four distinct approaches, ones best named by the players who developed them: 1) Anthony Braxton, 2) Evan Parker, 3) Steve Lacy, and 4) Sonny Rollins.

1) Anthony Braxton - Compositional/Improvisational

 When listening to Braxton play solo saxophone, it can be hard to distinguish between what’s written out and what’s improvised. He often combines 20th century classical composition with improvisation in its most general sense, and not necessarily jazz improvisation--where blues, swing and syncopated rhythms are at the core of the music’s aesthetic. However, the end results are always very musical. Whenever I improvise a piece on the spot, I can rarely do so without thinking about Braxton. The musical equivalent would be playing a sax and drum duo and not think of Coltrane and Elvin.


2.  Evan Parker - Sonic/Soundscape

Evan's  approach is probably the most radical and inventive of the aforementioned players because it has less to do with traditional ways of thinking about music with regards to form, rhythm, and harmony. It's more about exploring the numerous and often under-explored sonic possibilities of the instrument through the use of circular breathing and extending saxophone techniques. While studying Evan Parker’s music I thought it would be interesting to use the concept of playing multiphonics--playing two or more notes simultaneously--out of their usual role of noise and textures, and apply them in a more traditional way, such as using them to create chordal accompaniment. This potentially poses problems when playing with conventionally tuned pianos and guitars, since many of the chords produced using multiphonics are hybrid chords, borrowing from the microtonal and equal temperament scale systems.

3)  Steve Lacy - Head-Solo-Head

Steve Lacy’s style of solo saxophone is the same format used in most traditional jazz performances. Unlike Braxton, Lacy rarely wrote pieces specifically for solo saxophone. He would often take tunes that he played in duo, trios, quartets, quintets, etc., and play them solo. Of course, the solo interpretations sound a lot more free and elastic. Not to mention, that his approach is the most minimal of the four. With Lacy, it's all about sound, not virtuosity. You might say that his virtuosity comes from the way in which he deals with sound. I feel that's why he sometimes he barely improvises. He was able to make his statement with how he played the melody.



4)  Sonny Rollins - Extended Cadenza

I feel Sonny's solo saxophone approach was heavily influenced by the extended cadenzas played by John Coltrane during mid-late sixties, where Coltrane would often play cadenzas at the end of piece, usually ballads that were often longer than the piece itself. Sonny created a style of solo saxophone playing that often takes the listener on a melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and historical journey--drawing heavily upon his calypso background. Sonny’s approach is probably more closely related to Steve Lacy’s, of the aforementioned saxophonists. The big difference being that Sonny usually played on the tune’s harmonic structure (or some type of  harmonic structure), whereas Steve Lacy’s rarely followed as easily identifiable progression. As a matter of fact, he usually played free.

Of course, they are a lot of practitioners of the solo saxophone format that are not on this list. But I narrowed it down to the four whom I think have been the most influential on me. And I can't end this post without a special shout out to Dave Liebman, Lol Coxhill, John Butcher, and of course, Coleman Hawkins, who actually started it all.

Are We Selling Our Music Short In Our Effort To Work?

Several years ago, after I had recorded my first CD, Sam I Am with Criss Cross Records, Gerry Teekens, the label’s founder and producer, asked me if I had given any thought to what I’d like to do for the next record. I told him that I’d like to record with the same musicians, and hopefully, do a better job on the next one. Well, his answer is what you'd expect to get from most labels, club owners, and promoters: “You recorded with them the last time, we need something new for the next one."










It ‘s understandable from a business perspective why one would take this position. If your project has a different name and/or members, it’s seen as something new and fresh, and hopefully, easier to sell than if it’s just a repeat of the last one. My issue with this, however, is whether or not buying into this way of dealing with our music hurts us artistically.

I call it the Post-Dave-Douglas Syndrome (PDDS)--where we feel we have to have to invent a new band concept every time we want to make a CD or be booked on a festival. In all fairness to Dave, he’s just doing his thing, and I’m sure it’s all very sincere. Not to mention, I’m singling him out because he’s been the most successful at doing this. For good reason, mind you.

Dave is a product of the Downtown musical culture, where many of its musicians often played at places like The Knitting Factory, Tonic, and The Stone, often working with many groups and configurations. And I think the premise of this jack-of-all-bands approach was quite innocent in the beginning.

Imagine this: It’s a Wednesday night, and you write four or five new compositions to be performed during an hour-long set at one of the aforementioned venues. At the end of the gig, you and your band might make a hundred dollars and enjoy a few free beers. To add to this experience, you figure why not give the group some ironic name like The Running Still Funktet, John Doe's Organized Chaos, or my favorite, The Silent Noise Trio. And if you’re an active player on this scene, playing these venues regularly, in couple of years you could easily have three or four bands.

Of course, a gig is a gig. And as Billy Higgins said, “Get to the bandstand anyway you can.” But I figure there has to be more to it than this. It can’t all be about our “bookability” and developing new angles for promoting ourselves.

If you’re a composer, always writing for and working with a different project comes with the territory. There’s a kind of finality to a concert giving by a composer. The music is often more involved, and usually requires more of a commitment from the musicians who are hired to play it. And sometimes the music is a result of a commissioning or grant—with the exception of the big band. But I’m mainly speaking about small groups that are more improvisational and band oriented--what most of us do.

Some of the best work has come from those who have made a commitment to a group or a sound, and really explored it to the fullest. Miles, Ornette, Coltrane—they’re all great examples of this. Imagine if after a making A Love Supreme, Trane put together a Brazilian project, and then a Latin jazz project, just to make himself more bookable. We would have missed out on a lot of great music.

I started thinking about this more and more after noticing how people responded when I told them that I was working on my third solo CD. The most common responses were: “ Didn’t you just do one?” And my favorite: “Another one?” And I do understand where they are coming from.

A solo CD is usually looked at as one of these momentous things you do once in a lifetime--sort of like climbing Mount Everest. Half the fun is being able to say that you did it. And once you do, you have something interesting to talk about at parties.

And solo saxophone, mind you, is even more of a novelty. There are a few exceptions, like Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton, John Butcher, and Evan Parker, who have released large bodies of work playing in the unaccompanied format. But it’s not a musical path followed by many.

However, I do feel there’s a growing trend amongst musicians of not being committed to a single sound or musical vision. The focus is often times on finding a new project to promote or market, rather being solely focused on improving ones current one. The way that I see it is like this: Even if a couple of albums don't turn out as we'd hoped. That may only mean that it’s time to go deeper, not that you need to change your musical trajectory. I understand if it’s just not working out or if you feel that the music has run its course. Then yes, you must move on. I’ve done that myself.

We shouldn’t let one or two recordings define who we are as artists. And definitely should not cow tow to promoters, club owners, agents, only thinking about our bookability. We’ve already tried that. Musical cultures tend to flourish more when the music is actually put first, and not its commercial viability.

When we’re long gone, we want people to see our extensive discography and say, “Oh yeah, now I see what this guy was about.” Those one or two horrible CDs might become historical in that they will be seen as transitional CDs that enabled you to get to that one really great one. Look how many recordings Miles Davis made before he got to Kind of Blue.

You dig!