Woodwind doubler and jazz great James Moody passed away today. James Moody was known for his saxophone (especially tenor) and flute playing. You can read the obituary from the San Diego Union-Tribune, but, if you’re like me, you might rather just watch this. I love the weirdly humorous but deeply respectful intro by none other than Dizzy Gillespie.
I’m pleased to share some audio clips from my recent faculty recital at Delta State University.
It was the first evening concert of the new semester, so a nice crowd of students came to start accumulating their recital attendance points, as well as colleagues, friends, and community members. No one seemed daunted by the prospect of a solid hour of Debussy.
I enjoyed playing the flute Syrinx, clarinet Première Rapsodie, and saxophone Rapsodie, all of which I had studied in school but never performed publicly. The brief and charming clarinet Petite Pièce was new to me, and seemed to be a crowd favorite. I rounded out the recital with some of Debussy’s piano works, arranged for oboe and piano and for bassoon and piano. It works well for me to play all of the reed instruments on a recital, because that gives all my reed-playing students something to sink their teeth into, and the fabulous Dr. Shelley Collins was very gracious about me playing a flute piece on her turf. You can read my program notes here.
Having learned a couple of things from the last recital, I warmed up a little more extensively this time, and also brought in a space heater to keep my instruments warm backstage in the icy air conditioning. Both of these things seemed to help make the evening go more smoothly. One new experiment for me was the use of a bassoon harness, so I played that instrument standing up for the first time in public.
Here are the clips: Read More “New sound clips: Faculty woodwinds recital, Aug. 31, 2010”
Here are some videos from my recent Delta State University faculty recital. I enjoyed tackling Brett Wery’s challenging Sonata for multiple woodwinds (flute, clarinet, alto saxophone) and piano, plus some little oboe pieces and the André Previn bassoon sonata. As always, the goal was to challenge myself, so, as always, the performance had some hiccups. But it was a valuable growth experience for me and a chance to perform some new repertoire.
Here are some of the things that went on here at your favorite woodwind blog during the past year.
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For several years, I’ve maintained what I believe to be a fairly comprehensive list of woodwind doublers’ homepages. I’ve been scouring the web lately for the homepages of woodwind players of all kinds, and have put together several new lists from what I’ve found. Now you can browse lists of:
Read More “Woodwind players on the web”
In the previous installment of results from the Great Woodwind Doubler Census of 2011, I shared some basic demographic information about the 187 survey respondents. In this installment (and those to come), we’ll dig into some real doubling stuff.
The top results are unsurprising: saxophone, clarinet, and flute being the most widely-played, with oboe in a distant fourth place. I was a little surprised to see folk/ethnic/period woodwinds edge out the bassoon.
Read More “Woodwind Doubler Census results, part 2: instruments”
I got this in the mail this week:
The composer, Dr. Sy Brandon, will be in residence at the Delta State University Department of Music on Monday, Feb. 28. The agenda (forthcoming) will include an open rehearsal of Divertissement (with pianist Kumiko Shimizu) and a Q&A session with Dr. Brandon.
Read more about Divertissement for multiple woodwinds and piano
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He will definitely be missed! One of the greats. I had the chance to hear him live a couple of times. Equally great on sax and on flute.