Essential saxophone recordings: A work in progress

ByBret Pimentel

Seminal Early Concert Soloists

Mule, Marcel

Marcel Mule: Le Patron of the Saxophone (Clarinet Classics, compilation 1996)

Marcel Mule: Le Patron of the Saxophone: Encore! (Clarinet Classics, compilation 2000)

These compilations also feature recordings by the Mule Saxophone Quartet.

Wiedoft, Rudy

Kreisler of the Saxophone (Clarinet Classics, compilation [year?])

Leeson, Cecil

Rascher, Sigurd

Regrettably, recorded performances by Sigurd Rascher and Cecil Leeson are not currently in print. Important out-of-print recordings include Sigurd Rascher Plays the Saxophone, volumes I and II, formerly published by Grand Award, and The Art of Cecil Leeson, volumes I-VII, formerly available on the Enchante label.

Contemporary Concert Artists

Delangle, Claude

The Solitary Saxophone (Bis, 1994)

Unaccompanied works.

Harle, John

Saxophone Concertos (EMI, 1991)

Houlik, James

American Saxophone (Koch International Classics, 1996)

Widely regarded as the world’s leading concert tenor saxophonist.

Pittel, Harvey

Moving Along (Crystal, 1997)

Rousseau, Eugene

Saxophone Concertos (Deutsche Grammophon, 1998)

Londeix, Jean-Marie

No recordings currently available. Out-of-print recordings include Works for Saxophone and Piano (EMI, 1973) and Jean-Marie Londeix, Alto Saxophone (Golden Crest, 1975).

Saxophone Quartets and Ensembles

Mule Saxophone Quartet

See “Mule, Marcel” under Seminal Concert Soloists.

The Nuclear Whales Saxophone Orchestra

See “The Nuclear Whales Saxophone Orchestra” under Unusual Saxophones and Techniques.

Rascher Saxophone Quartet

Music for Saxophones (Cala, 1995)

Like Sigurd Rascher’s solo recordings, his recordings as leader of the Rascher Saxophone Quartet are out of print. This is a fine recent recording led by his daughter, Carina Rascher. It includes several works for saxophone quartet, plus several arrangements demonstrating the quartet’s virtuosity in a variety of styles.

World Saxophone Quartet

Plays Duke Ellington (Nonesuch, 1986)

Hollywood Saxophone Quartet

New York Saxophone Quartet

The Six Brown Brothers

Recordings by the Hollywood, New York, and Brown Brothers groups are, sadly, no longer available.

Saxophone in Chamber Music (with other instruments)

Cottrell, Steven

The Electric Saxophone (Clarinet Classics, 2001)

Saxophone works with electronic tape.

Horsch, Kyle

Chambersax (Clarinet Classics, 1999)

Chamber works with saxophone, including Webern’s op. 22 Quartet.

Seminal Jazz Soloists

Adderley, Julian “Cannonball”

Mercy, Mercy, Mercy: Live at “The Club” (Capitol, 1966)

Somethin’ Else (Blue Note, 1958)

Cannonball should also be heard on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue and Milestones.

Bechet, Sidney

Ken Burns Jazz: Sidney Bechet (Columbia/Legacy, compilation 2000)

A broad introduction to the first important jazz saxophonist on record. One of a very small handful of truly noteworthy soprano saxophonists.

Brecker, Michael

Michael Brecker (MCA/Impulse!, 1987)

Perhaps better known for his fusion bands and session work, Brecker’s debut as a leader reveals a contemporary approach to a more jazz-oriented style.

Coleman, Ornette

The Shape of Jazz to Come (Atlantic, 1959)

The best and best-known of Coleman’s groundbreaking and controversial avant-garde jazz recordings. On this date, Coleman plays a Grafton plastic saxophone.

Coltrane, John

A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1964)

Blue Train (Blue Note, 1957)

Giant Steps (Atlantic, 1960)

My Favorite Things (Atlantic, 1961)

These are the most essential of the essential recordings by jazz’s most important and influential tenor player. Also-rans with Coltrane as leader include John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman and Ascension. Selected recordings as a sideman include Kind of Blue (Columbia, 1959, Miles Davis, leader), Milestones (Columbia, 1958, Miles Davis, leader), and Mating Call (Tadd Dameron, leader). Noteworthy compilations have been released by several labels: John Coltrane: The Prestige Recordings (1956); Heavyweight Champion: The Complete Atlantic Recordings (Rhino, 1959); and The Classic Quartet: Complete Impulse! Studio Recordings (1998).

Getz, Stan

Getz/Gilberto (Verve, 1963)

People Time (Verve/Gitanes Jazz, 1991)

Getz/Gilberto is the best of Getz’s popular bossa nova recordings; People Time is a 2-disc set of live recordings in a duo setting with pianist Kenny Barron and a fine sampling of Getz’s exceptional bop playing.

Gordon, Dexter

Go! (Blue Note, 1962)

The highest of several career peaks by the widely influential West Coast bop tenor player. A more complete overview can be found in The Complete Blue Note Sixties Sessions (Capitol, compilation 1996).

Hawkins, Coleman

Body and Soul (RCA, compilation 1996)

This album (be careful—there are several with the same title) gives the best overview of Hawkins’s peak period. Ken Burns Jazz: Coleman Hawkins (Columbia/Legacy, compilation 2000) provides a broader picture of his career, including the early recordings with the Fletcher Henderson band. Both albums include the quintessential “Body and Soul” recording of 1939.

Mulligan, Gerry

The Original Gerry Mulligan Tentet and Quartet (GNP Crescendo, 1953)

Also recommended is Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool (Capitol, 1949).

Parker, Charlie

Blue Bird: Legendary Savoy Sessions (Definitive, compilation 2000)

Confirmation: The Best of the Verve Years (Verve, compilation 1995)

Legendary Dial Masters (Stash, compilation 1989)

These three compilations cover the most essential master takes. Savoy, Dial, and Verve have each released “complete” multi-CD sets that include alternates and partial takes.

Rollins, Sonny

Saxophone Colossus (Prestige, 1956)

Way Out West (Prestige/Contemporary, 1957)

A close runner-up is Tenor Madness (Prestige, 1956), which includes the famous title duet with John Coltrane.

Young, Lester

Ken Burns Jazz (Columbia/Legacy, compilation 2000)

This is the best single-disc collection of Young’s playing. It includes the famous Lady Be Good with Billie Holiday, sessions with the Basie band, and some of Young’s neglected post-WWII recordings. A more complete set is the 4-disc The Lester Young Story (Columbia, compilation 2000). Important small-group recordings are Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio (Verve, 1952) and Pres and Teddy (Verve, 1956) with the Teddy Wilson Quartet.

Seminal Soloists in Rock, Pop, and Related Styles

Bostic, Earl

All His Hits (King, compilation 1996)

“G,” Kenny

Greatest Hits (Arista, 1982)

McNeely, Cecil “Big Jay”

Nervous (Saxophile, compilation 1995)

Ousley, “King Curtis”

Instant Soul: The Legendary King Curtis (Razor & Tie, compilation 1994)

Randolph, Homer “Boots”

Greatest Hits (Monument, compilation 1976)

Sanborn, David

The Best of David Sanborn (Warner Bros., compilation 1994)

Unusual Saxophones and Techniques

Carter, James

Chasin’ the Gypsy (Atlantic, 2000)

Carter plays soprano and tenor saxophones, as well as the rare bass and rarer f-mezzo.

Kirk, Rahsaan Roland

The Inflated Tear (Atlantic, 1967)

One of the few multi-instrumentalists who has dared to play several at once, and one of the even fewer to pull it off. On this date, Kirk plays tenor and such saxophone cousins as the stritch and the manzello, not to mention English horn, clarinet, and flute.

The Nuclear Whales Saxophone Orchestra

Fathom This (Whaleco, 1999)

The saxophone sextet perhaps best known for using saxophones from sopranino to contrabass. Both of those, plus five in between, are heard on this album.

Rollini, Adrian

Bouncin’ in Rhythm (Pearl, compilation 1995)

A collection of recordings by the unchallenged master of the now-rare bass saxophone, with bands led by Frankie Trumbauer, Bix Beiderbecke, Joe Venuti, and others.

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  • Required recordings, spring 2014

    ByBret Pimentel

    Here are the recordings I’m requiring my university students to add to their collections this semester (depending on which instrument they play). All are available on CD or for download from Amazon or iTunes.

    Allan Vogel: Oboe Obsession

    Amazon (CD) | Amazon (download)

    Repertoire: Saint-Saëns Sonata, Poulenc Sonata, Britten 6 Metamorphoses after Ovid, Schumann Three Romances, W. F. Bach Duet, Shinohara Obsession. Read More “Required recordings, spring 2014”

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    Anatomy of a bad bamboo flute

    ByBret Pimentel

    Bamboo flutes and other “world”-type woodwinds of true musician quality can be difficult to find, and if you’re not experienced with them it can be nearly impossible to tell if an online seller’s wares are genuinely playable or more like souvenir items. I’m going to share an experience of mine in which I gambled and got burned, in case it is instructive to anyone out there.

    Recently I needed a bamboo flute in a specific and unusual key (high B-flat) on very short notice for a gig (a performance of the Duke Ellington Nutcracker Suite). My favorite trusted flutemakers don’t currently make flutes in that key, so I placed an order with a flutemaker that I hadn’t bought from before. (I won’t identify the flutemaker here, but I will say that he and his staff were very nice to me. When there was a totally-understandable wrinkle in getting the flute shipped on time, they even overnighted it plus threw in a very nice flute bag at no extra charge.)

    Ability to ship quickly was certainly a factor in my choice of vendors, but I was also reassured by the fact that the maker sells flutes in three grades: student, intermediate, and professional. I ponied up the money for a professional flute, and expressed to the flutemaker my need for excellent intonation and a strong high register.

    Here is what I received:

    cute, right?
    cute, right?

    Now, the proof of a flute is in the playing, and there’s no way to know for sure if it’s any good without giving it a try. But here are some immediate visual warning signs:

    • Uh-oh
      uh-oh

      The embouchure hole is strangely shaped. I don’t know for sure what the flutemaker intended, but round-ish is pretty standard. Since bamboo is an irregular material, a certain amount of air noise (vibrational inefficiency) is to be expected, but this flute is very airy, and I suspect the oddly-shaped and roughly-finished embouchure hole is a contributor to this.

    • This is an extremely wide-bored flute. Often for flute-like instruments we see a length-to-diameter ratio of something around 30:1, but this one is closer to 15:1. To oversimplify the ramifications of this a bit, a wider-bore flute (a smaller ratio) will generally tend to be stronger in the low register and weaker in the high register. For this gig, I needed a flute that could play just to the second octave above the fundamental note—not an unreasonable demand for any common variety of bamboo transverse flute. I couldn’t get this flute to do it. A smaller-diameter bamboo would improve this flute’s upper range.
    • The finger holes are fairly large, and about the same size. Generally, similarly-sized holes leads to more even tone across the instrument’s scale, but also means that the right hand index and middle finger holes are placed very close together for a simple-system major-scale flute, and on this one the holes are uncomfortably close for me. Larger holes decrease the likelihood of finding usable cross-fingerings; I needed one good cross-fingering for this gig, and couldn’t find one that worked—couldn’t even “lip” the chromatic note into tune. A well-designed flute strikes a balance between large and small holes, and similarly- and differently-sized holes.
    • The second octave is quite noticeably flat. This is a common problem of bamboo flutes (or any cylindrical-bore flutes), but this one is particularly difficult to wrangle into tune. Really excellent bamboo flutes are sometimes made from bamboo carefully selected to have just a bit of taper in the embouchure-hole end, like a concert flute’s headjoint, or have some bore work done to create an internal taper; this helps to bring the upper register into tune with the lower.

    When I realized that the flute wasn’t going to be usable, I packed my piccolo and a B-flat pennywhistle as possible alternatives. As it turned out, we didn’t end up playing the movement in question, so I was off the hook.

    Shop smart!

  • Review: Akai EWI4000s wind controller

    ByBret Pimentel

    I recently got my hands on one of these:
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    Believe me when I tell you that this is a seriously cool instrument.

    Even after hearing and reading a number of rave reviews of the Akai EWI 4000S, I was pleasantly surprised by its playability, responsiveness, and capacity for expression. In my opinion, this is a real instrument, and a viable option for serious music-making.

    A few highlights:
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  • Review: Duets for the ‘Double-Reed Doubler’ by Gene Kaplan

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    A few years ago I reviewed Gene Kaplan’s Duos for Doublers, a set of duets for woodwind doublers playing flute, clarinet, and saxophone. I was pleased to hear from Gene again recently about his new Duets for the ‘Double-Reed Doubler.’ It contains seven duets in a variety of styles, with one doubler playing oboe, clarinet, and alto saxophone, and the other playing clarinet, bassoon, and tenor saxophone. (No flute in either part.)

    The books (a set of two, one for each player) are neat and easy to read, with well-placed page turns and spiral binding. Like the Duos for Doublers, this set currently costs $30.

    I’m pleased to see more materials making their way into the world that address the growing pressure on woodwind doublers to be skilled double reed players. The idea of “doubling” meaning just flute, clarinet, and saxophone is increasingly a thing of the past. Working on doubling in a chamber music setting, like these duets, is a useful way to improve your skills as a soloist-level player of multiple instruments.

    Here’s a demo of one of the duets, called “Machinations:”

    I wouldn’t call these duets easy, exactly, but they aren’t overwhelming for doublers with a little background in each instrument. All the instruments stay mostly in their lower and middle registers. The oboe rarely ventures outside the staff, and the bassoon stays squarely in bass-clef range. There are some fast switches (catch me trying to play bassoon with the tenor in my lap in the demo video), some tricky navigation of the clarinet’s throat-to-clarion break, some articulated low notes in the saxophones, and other real but not unusual challenges.

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    Recently, I’ve noticed a lot of jazz musician bloggers opining about the evils of memorizing patterns and “licks,” and calling for original and creative improvisation. While I don’t think anybody will argue about the importance of individuality and creativity, I do think it’s a big mistake to ignore the value of memorizing, practicing, and internalizing established jazz vocabulary.

    When a person learns a foreign language, they learn first to repeat some standard useful phrases. Then they learn to rearrange the vocabulary and syntax of those phrases to create new ones. Over a lifetime of study and practice, they may learn the language well enough to speak or write with their own distinctive creative voice. But if a student tries on the first day of French class to be creative and original, they aren’t likely to make much sense. To speak the language, you need to hear it, imitate it, and then repeat over and over. Genuine individual originality comes much, much later.

    So I was pleased to read an excellent blog post by saxophonist Bob Hartig:

    If you listen to a lot of Kenny Garrett, and if you take it upon yourself to transcribe a bunch of Kenny Garrett solos, and if you steep yourself in those Kenny Garrett solos, then chances are you will come out sounding an awful lot like Kenny Garrett.

    Now, if that’s all you aspire to, then that’s where you’ll end up: as a Kenny Garrett clone. But if you desire to forge your own voice, then Kenny will simply become a part of your vocabulary, a vocabulary that includes other influences besides Kenny and increasingly reflects your personal explorations with melody, harmony, timbre, and nuance. You are an individual, after all, and the sheer force of your individuality will direct you toward your own sound and approach.

    Bob expands on this in the comments section:

    A good writer doesn’t become one by attempting to create a different dictionary. He or she develops expertise by becoming conversant with the existing language, and that happens largely through reading the works of great writers who have gone before. Through careful scrutiny and application of how others have handled the English language, the individual’s personal writing style emerges.

    Shakespeare is noted for adding a huge number of words and phrases to the English language—undoubtedly one of the most creative minds working in that medium. But how many of the words and phrases in his works were really brand new inventions? Surely less than 1%. And how much did Charlie Parker or John Coltrane add to the jazz language, that wasn’t already there? Their contributions are staggeringly significant, but what they actually created out of thin air was a drop in the bucket among all the notes they played in their careers. For most of us mortals, our truly original contributions to the language (be it English or jazz) are few and far between; most of our creativity happens when we shuffle and remix the materials that are already before us.

    Bob backs up  his ideas about the importance of jazz vocabulary with his Giant Steps Scratch Pad project. The Scratch Pad provides a wealth of tasty and useful vocabulary for playing over the chord changes to John Coltrane’s tune “Giant Steps,” a tune that has challenged the best of jazz players for decades because of its unusual and elegantly symmetrical chord progression. Bob was kind enough to send me a review copy of the Giant Steps Scratch Pad Complete, a new PDF-only (at least for now) edition that contains the same material as the Scratch Pad, transposed into all twelve keys. The transposed material makes this especially good for those who aspire to play Giant Steps in all twelve keys, or who double on instruments of different transpositions.

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  • Saxophone altissimo books: Raschèr vs. Rousseau

    ByBret Pimentel

    My university saxophone students are anxious to tackle the altissimo register, and it’s not at all uncommon for them to show up to their first lessons clutching the Sigurd Raschèr Top-Tones for the Saxophone book and wearing a hopeful expression. I also see the Raschèr book frequently and glibly recommended on online forums. With the greatest respect for Raschèr, I think this is a mistake.

    Don’t get me wrong: the Raschèr book is a classic and contains a great deal of wisdom. It is a must-have for the well-read saxophonist. But I think most saxophonists would do better to start with Eugene Rousseau’s Saxophone High Tones, and have the Raschèr on hand for supplementary exercises and instruction.

    Get this one first
    Get this one first
    Use this one as a supplement
    Use this one as a supplement

    I’m going to make the following point first, not because I think it’s necessarily the most important, but because it’s the one that will click with those of you who are hoping to “learn altissimo” in an afternoon by looking at a fingering chart: Rousseau’s fingering charts are much better. They are better suited to “modern” (Mark VI and beyond) instruments and more complete (in the sense of providing many more options for each note, though Raschèr’s chart does go a little higher). Rousseau also provides separate fingering charts for soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone, while Raschèr provides only one chart, which he indicates in the first-edition foreword is intended for “E-flat saxophones”—altos, that is. (I do have a few issues with the visual layout of Rousseau’s charts, and Raschèr’s too, but that’s another rant.) Read More “Saxophone altissimo books: Raschèr vs. Rousseau”

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