8 posts tagged “saxophone”

A Sample For Your Evaluation

Dec 7, 2006
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I've been doing a lot of recording lately. It's a very useful tool for a performing musician, because you can get out of your own head and hear what you really sound like. You may think you're dragging the rhythm in a certain measure, then hear the recording and realize you're rushing it. You may think your playing is even, and your dynamics varied, but the microphone does not lie. It teaches you that you can't always count on your own interpretation.

Today I recorded a movement from a piece I am performing soon, and I actually thought it turned out rather well. So here it is, for your enjoyment:

Concertina da Camera: II. Larghetto

Comments are welcomed.

Disaster Averted

Nov 12, 2006
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I found a horn to borrow, from an alum of my school who's now living and teaching up in Beverly, MA. The trip to retrieve it was more strange than I'd have liked, but it's in my possession for the next 3 days and I don't have to worry about Monday's concert.

One thing does worry me, though: It's a really good horn. My soprano is a Super Action 80 Series II from 1992, and it is starting to show it's age - in fact, that's why it's not functional to begin with. It's interesting that there are a lot of horns that play great for 40, even 50 years, but it seems that the more recent models tend not to have quite the same longevity. It's almost certain that after going through the full overhaul as it needs to, my II will play well for another 5 or 6 years. The question is, does it play well enough now to justify the $500 overhaul, or an investment in the horn equal to 27.8% of the purchase price? The horn I'm borrowing is a Series III, and it's much more recent (circa 2004), with much better mechanics and ergonomics, and in general it just responds better. I like the core tone of my soprano, but having to wrestle with the keywork on occasion is not nice.

Maybe i'll just sell some stuff around my apartment, get the repair, and put all this off for another couple years. Or maybe this will drive me nuts for the next 6 months and I'll take out another student loan to replace it.

Just come to the damned concert.

About that performance announcement...

Nov 10, 2006
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It's still on, and I'm still set to perform. Only I now have no horn to play. In rehearsal today I felt that my horn just wasn't right. Notes were weirdly out of tune, some weren't speaking, some made awkward gurgles and jumps. The first cause that pops into mind when these problems come up is a leak somewhere on the instrument.

For non-musicians, it goes like this: on a saxophone, the tone is produced by a standing wave that vibrates through the body of the instrument. In order to modulate the pitch of this wave, the player opens and closes keys on the body and bell of the instrument to shorten it (raise the pitch) or lengthen it (lower the pitch). When we say there is a leak, it means that somewhere, one of these keys is not closing and/or sealing completely, and thus the wave is disrupted.

Upon taking it to Rayburn's and having Danny drop a leak light down the bell, it turns out virtually every. single. key. is leaking. In total, there were 8 keys that were not leaking...out of 23. Not good. The pads on the keys are 14 years old and have deteriorated past any kind of functional use. The fix? A total overhaul of the instrument, a full repad and rebuild, which takes a week and costs $500. When considering that I only paid $1800 for the horn, that amount becomes obscene. Paying a repair bill that is 30% of the value of the instrument is akin to taking your car to the dealership and having them tell you it needs $10,000 in repairs.

I don't have a choice - if I don't fix it, the horn doesn't play worth a dollar - but I'm left desperately searching for a soprano to borrow from someone, somewhere.

Why can't this kind of thing happen in the summer, when I rarely have performances like this?

Performance Date

Nov 6, 2006
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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13TH, 2006, 8 PM

THE BOSTON CONSERVATORY - SEULLY HALL

The Boston Saxophone Orchestra - Charles Ives' Variations on "America"

The Longy Saxophone Quartet - Duke Ellington's Prelude To A Kiss, Eugene Bozza's Andante et Scherzo

The New England Conservatory Saxophone Quartet - Gabriel Pierne's Introduction et Variations sur une Rondo Populaire

and others! come to a fellow Voxer's performance and support the arts!

Sigh...

Oct 16, 2006
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I don't mean to neglect this page, really. It's only that it has become something of an afterthought when I don't have a regular internet connection and Comcast does not see it fit to install one when I ask them to.

So much has happened in the last 3 weeks. It's challenging to recall it all with the same color I usually lend my entries.

I suppose I'll start with my traffic accident. On October 11 I was hit by a car while riding my bicycle in the bike lane on Cambridge St. A car made a left turn into an alley directly into my path of travel and hit me, sending me over the top of his car and onto the street on the other side. By the will of some galactic predestination, I not only didn't hit my head on anything, I barely hit any part of me on anything. I took a good lump on my left leg, where the car struck me, and on my right elbow which was shielding my fragile cranium, but otherwise injury free. By another telling predestination, an ambulance was driving by at the exact moment I was struck. Before I had even hit the ground, the EMTs were on their feet.

So there's that: I went through a bicycle-versus-auto collision with no lasting damage. All in all pretty lucky, huh? Oh wait, my bike was destroyed. There is that.

I am sad that my bike was badly beaten. It was an awesome machine, the best bike I have ever owned, without comparison. During the accident the front fork - which is carbon fiber - ripped in half, the handlebars compressed to half their size, the headtube twisted, the front wheel bent in half, the chainring dented...all sorts of nastiness. The one thing I can say is that were it not for the bike's inherent strength, I probably would have taken a much different path through the accident and possibly been injured more seriously.

So now it comes to buying a new bike. The insurance company of the other party will be paying for it, so I took the bike to one of Boston's best bike shops and had them write up a letter stating that it is a total loss, and quoting me on the cost to replace the bike, helmet, and cyclometer. This total comes out to be enough to buy the next model up on my previous bike's line, so i am debating whether or not to go that route. I can also claim as lost all the accessories which were on the bike at the time, which would raise the payout significantly to the point that I could easily afford the higher model and a better helmet, as well as some nifty new accessories, while at the same time salvaging some of the damaged-but-not-quite-totalled old parts, such as the very nice tires I had and the rack and pack. This may be the route I end up taking.

School is going well. I have lots and lots of work to do - don't we all - but I missed an entire week of solfege due to a cold and the associated inability to sing, and it's difficult to make those up when you still have to deal with the usual load of 3 sightsinging pieces a day. I will say this, though: My sightsinging has gotten much better in the last month and a half. Now if I could just my piano skills up to par...

I made good progress on saxophone through the first weeks of the semester, until I hit a rough patch in the last few. First came an ankle injury during a basketball game, so I couldn't stand while playing for several days, inhibiting my breathing ability; I fell ill, as previously mentioned, and had even further breathing problems; I was hit by a car and had bruising on my elbow sufficient enough to cause discomfort when playing for several days. However, all things have passed, and hopefully I can stay incident-free to the end of the semester and accomplish the goals I set for myself.

For the end of this semester I'll be finishing up the Ibert and putting away the Creston, and for next semester I'll take on the Dahl Concerto and the most challenging piece I'll yet face, the Fuzzy Bird Sonata. Ken is of the mind that I am already possessed of the skills necessary to perform the piece, having performed works of Ned Rorem in the past, but I am not quite so confident. Rorem and Yoshimatsu are very different, and Yoshimatsu very foreign to me, but I am nonetheless very excited.

Our quartet is progressing well. I have been very pleasantly surprised by our ability to put together complex pieces in very little time, and our ability to work together without conflict and in a singular direction. We may actually make an attempt at the Concerto Competition in the spring semester, something unusual for an ensemble that has been together for less than a semester.

I seem to have run out of things to say for now, so I will part and possibly post again in another 3 weeks.

Yes, I still live

Sep 26, 2006
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Another very sketchy update, yes, but I still don't have an internet connection of my own and when I can get one it's been sort of spotty on the speed end.

First things first, school is going very well. I've worked my way up the ladder of sorts, and I'm now playing soprano in both my school's top quartet and in the Boston Saxophone Orchestra. Just last week we had our masterclass with Jean-Marie Londeix and Bill Street, and it was amazing. Londeix has such mastery of the instrument, such knowledge of the repertoire, that it's impossible not to learn something profound when you hear him speak. One thing he was particularly concerned with was the historical background behind every piece. Taking into consideration that most of the standards in the saxophone repertoire were comissioned for him, he knows the history extremely well. He brings in so many outside inspirations - authors, directors, other instruments, poets, colors, moods - that one could never run out of places to find influence.

Picture? OK.

Boston Saxophone Studio

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Sorry for the low quality and lack of focus, but I (obviously) didn't take the photo. In any event, that's Londeix in the center, flanked by the Boston Saxophone Studio (comprised of the students from New England Conservatory, Longy School Of Music, Boston Conservatory, and Berklee, all students of Ken Radnofsky).

The apartment is great, the location is as awesome as I expected it would be, and so far the cats seem to like it. I also joined Gold's Gym and have gotten back into the swing of my workout routine, and so far it's been going great as well. I'm down another couple pounds since I arrived in Boston, but I can't be sure whether that's getting back into working out or walking about 3 miles a day. Either way, if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

All in all, I enjoy Boston.

I still have little internet access

Sep 7, 2006
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A very fast and dirty update -

I got my things form UPS, a large amount of which were broken, but thankfully nothing extremely expensive and yes, I did insure them.

School is awesome. Studying with Ken has been great so far, and my playing has gotten exponentially better. I seem to have finally cracked the altissimo problem, and I'm getting up to a D#4 now. I'm making really good progress on the Concertino, and I am starting a new Sonata this week. I also have a very cool duo with violin this semester, and some sax quartet and sax orchestra work. We're working on Lauba's Les 7 Iles, which is very very hard, so I'm understudying on it, but we will be rehearsing and performing it for Jean-Marie Londeix in only about 10 days. Never did I imagine I'd be rehearsing with Londeix less than a month after moving here.

Still no internet, TV, or phone service, so I am kind of incommunicado for the time being, but I will post when I have new info. Also, cartoon:

Rejected Cartoons Snippet

On Hangovers and Jacques Ibert

Aug 14, 2006
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It was probably not a good idea to have a going away party with my friends on a Sunday night.

I just woke up, it's 3:30 in the afternoon, I have tons of shit to do, and the first thing I want to do is lay in bed. Even my cats think I'm lazy.

On a slightly more positive note, I am enamored with the new piece I have just begun to work on. Jacques Ibert's Concertino da Camera pour Saxophone Alto et Onze instruments is like taking a weekend in Paris; there is the calamity and enormity of the city around you, overwhelming you until you begin to feel the life of the land and the people; anxiety turns to excitement in quick fashion as you walk about the city on a pleasant day, with all the sights and sounds you've never experienced. You come upon the Tour Eiffel, soaring far above you, its size and scope dizzying, but your attention falls back to Earth and the beautiful city you are in. You are there, but such a small part of this place that you are only a mere wisp compared to the noise of the city. The magnitude of the place never leaves you, the constant motion, but you always come back to the beauty and life of the City of Lights.