You'll Never Get Rich Doing This

My friend and fellow saxophone gear-head (a more acute case than mine) has a handmade baritone saxophone mouthpiece that doesn't play well for him. Mouthpieces are quirky. What works for one player is a disaster for another. So I thought I'd give his MP a try and buy it from him if it was good.

The maker is Francois-Louis, who makes some very serious claims for the engineering behind his handiwork. In fact I have one of his tenor mouthpieces, and I like it. However, I tried the bari MP and right away saw that it didn't play as well as the one I'm using. So, with a heavy heart, I'm returning it.

That's too bad, in way. Wind players are always hoping that one bit of new gear - a new kind of reed, a new kind of ligature, a new MP, a new flute head-joint, a new trumpet mouthpiece - will make the crucial difference between the way we are actually playing and the way we would like to play.

If you search for mouthpieces on the Internet, you'll find tons of them, for all the sizes of saxophones and clarinets, for brass, etc. Why are there so many people putting masses of effort into designing and manufacturing what are at best niche products? How many mouthpieces can Francois Louis sell in a year? His company will never make the Fortune Five Hundred.

The mouthpiece manufacturers are fanatics, as are the flute makers and lutanists.

I am immensely grateful to these people who are more interested in making a fine instrument (or accessory) than in making a lot of money. When I was in Boston a couple of years ago, I went to Flutistry to see whether a new head joint would improve my playing. I spent a few hours in a room by myself, trying one head joint after another, until I finally bought one made by Emanuel, and I'm still pleased with it. The head joint I bought was used, so it just cost an arm and not an arm and a leg, but it's very hard to make a head joint, and I'm sure Emanuel makes a lot less than people with less skill and devotion to their profession. Though, for that matter, if he (or Francois Louis) has gotten as rich as Croesus doing what he does, I wouldn't resent it.

Bach, Mozart, Charlie Parker, my Baritone Saxophone

For a change I played my heavy, awkward baritone saxophone this morning (this is a picture of the kind I have). I often joke that owning a baritone saxophone is a lot like owning the ball was, when I was a kid. If you owned the ball, and they were choosing up sides, they had to let you play. I play the bari in a community orchestra and in a sax quartet. However, because of the Corona Virus, both the orchestra and the quartet have suspended rehearsals, giving me less of an incentive to concentrate on the bari and more incentive to try out my other saxophones, and even my clarinet. This morning, however, I lugged my baritone out and played it. Every time I pick up one of my instruments (except the clarinet), I remember how much I love it.

Years ago I bought (yes, bought, didn't download or copy from someone else) two of the Bach cello suites, arranged for baritone saxophone, and I have worked on them sporadically. This morning I played through the first one on the baritone - not very well, but that's not the point. Playing the suite as an exercise is more valuable musically than playing any exercise I can think of.

Similarly, I have been playing some Mozart duets on the flute, knowing I'd never learn them well enough, but using them to improve my tone and to deepen my understanding of music. When you play Mozart, there are frequently moments when you say to yourself, "How did he ever think of that?" Suddenly he inserts a new theme or does something that makes his endless musical creativity clear. I don't get exactly the same feeling when I play Bach, though playing his music always makes me admire it more. The music develops essentially out of itself, evolving and going where you might not expect it to go, but doing it the way an evenly flowing river becomes a rapids for a while and then flows along calmly again.

After I played through the Bach suite, I picked up the Charlie Parker Omnibook (which I also bought and paid for) and played four or five of his songs. They are astonishingly compressed, impatient, jagged, refreshing after Bach's long developments.

Evolving Taste - the Challenge of Eric Dolphy

When I first heard Eric Dolphy play, I couldn't stand his music. It sounded formless and wild. Now I love and admire it, more than fifty years after the fact. Recently I happened on a great documentary about Dolphy, "The Last Date," which made me appreciate him even more.
I wonder how it is that one's taste can change that way. I also wonder why now, when I'm an old guy, I love the freedom and intensity of his music, and why, as a student, when I ought to have been open to it, I just couldn't go there.
The musicians who were interviewed in the documentary constantly spoke of Dolphy's single-minded pursuit of music. He practiced all the time (like Coltrane), and he was the master of three very different instruments: alto saxophone, flute, and bass clarinet. He was more or less the first musician to use the bass clarinet as a solo instrument in jazz, and his mastery of the instrument was phenomenal.
One of the musicians interviewed in the documentary (which was made in 1991) was a Dutch bass-clarinet player who was working on transcriptions of Dolphy's solos. Not only are they nearly impossible to play, but he would move from one demanding instrument to another during a set.
A couple of the elderly black people who knew Dolphy during his childhood in Los Angeles, who are interviewed in the film, said that he aspired to play clarinet in the Los Angeles symphony orchestra, a path that was blocked to black people at the time (he was born in 1928). Similarly, Nina Simone (before she took that name) was unable to pursue a career as a classical pianist. Lucky for the world that they were thwarted in that direction! Jazz would be much impoverished if they had gone on to become classical musicians. In his lectures on "The Ethics of Jazz" at Harvard, Herbie Hancock also tells how he was blocked as a  classical pianist. Notwithstanding these three creative people, who found their way in defiance of discrimination, I'm sure that there were hundreds of talented black kids with great potential as classical musicians who didn't find their way into jazz or another creative musical field.
In my own modest musical practice, I only hope to keep deepening my appreciation of music. Even if I play Handel and Mozart on the flute, and I don't even try to emulate Dolphy's freedom, hearing him also gives me appreciation of classical music.
I recently read a long book of essays by the eminent classical pianist, Alfred Brendel, whose repertoire did not include contemporary musicians, although he was intensely interested in new music and listened to it. You can stick to what your comfortable doing and are good at, and admire what make you feel uncomfortable and inadequate at if you tried it. Though, on the other hand, doing things that make you uncomfortable is a good way to grow.
It appears that Dolphy died of undiagnosed diabetes at the age of only 36 because the doctors in Berlin assumed that a black musician who had gone into a coma was overdosed with heroine - and Dolphy didn't use drugs. What a loss.

Tone Development - finding your own way

No serious music teacher neglect the matter of tone development.
Every great musician has an unmistakable, personal sound, which is recognizable to aficionados. I got to be pretty good at recognizing the better known jazz saxophone players when I was listening to a lot of jazz. I'm sure lovers of violin music can tell immediately whether they're hearing Heifetz, Menuhin, Stern, or Grumiaux.
We amateurs strive to produce a sound that is beautiful and our own, and we are taught that the way to do so is, first of all, by playing long tones. I have done a lot of that in my day, trying to turn the practice into a meditation, trying to listen hard to the sound I'm producing. But, how interesting can you make that?
About a year ago I found a pdf file of Marcel Moyse's book: "Tone Development Through Interpretation," and printed it out. The theory behind the book is clear: long tones can only get you so far; you have to put the notes together into musical phrases. Moyse, who played in orchestras, took a lot of arias from major operas and turned them into exercises, challenging the student to transpose them into different keys. For a while I was diligently playing through Moyse's exercises, but, in the end, I don't like opera that much, and playing Verdi or Donizetti arias didn't send me.
I love to play standards, however. So, I reasoned, why not use standards, especially ballads (right now I happen to be hearing John Coltrane playing "You Don't Know What Love Is," one of the greatest ballads in existence - and what Coltrane does with it!!!!) for tone development?
Musicians can use whatever music they enjoy playing as exercises in tone development. We don't need Moyse. But we have to remember to play very slowly, so that we can be attentive to the sound of every note, and to the connection between them.

Music in Isolation

It's hard to maintain motivation when you're not playing with a goal in mind.
Because of the threat of Covid-19, Israel, where I live, is essentially shut down. My flute teacher is not permitted to give lessons. The wind orchestra where I play every week cannot meet for rehearsals. The sax quartet I play with has suspended operations. I occasionally play Haydn flute sonatas with my wife, but otherwise, I am on my own.
For quite a while I was mainly practicing flute, trying to achieve a satisfactory level. I'm almost there, so I've decided to practice more saxophone again. On flute I have been working on tone, articulation, and flexibility in fingering. I've started doing the same thing on sax once again. I went through all that years ago, and I more or less counted on my ensemble playing to maintain my level. But now that my ensembles are suspended, I have to practice a bit more seriously.
This morning I took out my baritone saxophone and spent about 20 minutes doing various warm-up exercises. I enjoy the warm-ups. They can be a form of meditation. Recently I watched a 2 part documentary about Jascha Heifetz, who was a stickler for very elaborate scale exercises. He never neglected them.
After the exercises I did one of the things I enjoy most of all in music. I played a bunch of standards: Someone to Watch Over You, Stars Fell on Alabama, Skylark, Stardust, Love is Here to Stay, Lover Man, and a few others. I tried to play these ballads as musically as I could. They aren't technically challenging, but the melodies are great, and you can hear yourself as you play.
On flute I have been playing baroque and classical music. Recently I've been reading through the Haydn sonatas, and the more familiar with them I become, the better I like them. I'm also working on the first Mozart duet for two flutes or for flute and violin. As I play these great composers, I am constantly amazed by their creativity. Where did they get their musical ideas?
The Haydn is not beyond my technical proficiency on the flute. However, I don't think I'll ever be able to play the Mozart as fast as it's supposed to be. Recently I listened to a performance of the W. F. Bach flute duets, something I was working on for a while. The two flutists were so great, much better than I could dream of playing, but I'm not discouraged. I'm inspired.
Occasionally I play a standard or a blues, or bossa nova on the flute, but I prefer to play that kind of music on the sax. It's as if I have a split personality - classical and jazzy - and one instrument is for one part of the personality, the other for the other.

Patient Practice

There's so much music to learn, I want to tear through each piece and get on to the next.
The warm-up exercises I do take so long. When will I ever get through them and reach the music?
My flute playing is still inconsistent.
How long can I work on boring long tones, vibrato, scales and arpeggios?
When will I be able to play sixteenth notes with sufficient speed?
How long will it take for the exercises in musical theory that I do (playing chord progressions, etc.) to sink in and become second nature?
I'm already an old man. It's a race against time. My chances of improving as a musician are probably lower than my chances of declining into decrepitude.
What's the solution?
Only patience.
If it takes me a month to learn a piece, and, even after that month, I can't play it well, I have to understand that the month wasn't wasted.  I have to derive satisfaction from the process, from the effort, from slight improvement. And I have to avoid frustration and disappointment when the improvement doesn't happen.

Communication in and through Music

The level of communication between Hillel Zori and Zvi Plesser, when they played the duets they composed based on Bach's solo cello suites, was extraordinary. In the discussion after the concert, Plesser noted that they had spent hundreds of hours working on the project over the past eight years, and you could tell. Not only was their playing seamless - though their tones are slightly different, if you listened with your eyes closed, you could probably not tell who was playing or whether it was one or two instruments playing - but it was also clear that they had worked out together just how to perform the pieces.
The communication between Marina Solodovna and Polina Semenihina was also excellent. The two women have been working together for quite a while, developing a repertoire and deciding how to play it. Without good communication between the musicians of an ensemble, communication between the musicians the the listeners, which is the point, after all, is impossible.
Lack of that communication was what made it difficult for our saxophone quartet to play for the patients in the nursing home. The communication among ourselves was excellent, because we had to concentrate very hard to ignore the occasional shouts of a demented patient and even the time when an old women drove her wheelchair into us. Most of the patients were somnolent and unresponsive, however, making us wonder whether anything got across.