Klarinet Archive - Posting 000279.txt from 2003/08

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Mouthpiece patches, stiff upper lip
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 10:30:58 -0400

Tony Pay wrote,
>I assume there's no danger of anyone thinking that
>what I'm about to say is in any way a suggestion of
>what it's *correct* to do, but...
>
>...it did happen that Elizabeth Lutyens in the late 70's
>wrote in her piece, 'Islands', a part for clarinet doubling
>Eb, bass and baritone sax. I'm not, and never have been,
>a sax player, but the few fortissimo notes required in
>this case I thought might not be beyond me.
>
>When it came to it, though, what with all the other things
>I had to do in the concert, the only way I could manage it
>was to stick the baritone into the *side* of my mouth --
>'half-lip' I suppose you could call it.
>
>Anyway, it enabled me to blow Barry Tuckwell off the stage
>-- an achievement not to be sniffed at, I can tell you:-)

That I would like to have heard! :-)

You hit upon a method of playing the saxophone that's *preferred* by
several jazz sax players. Kenny G always plays that way. (Yeah, I know, I
know - - but I'm not going to make the ritual vomiting noises here, because
before Kenny G had a family to feed, switched to holding one note for ten
minutes at a time on a soprano sax and made buckets of money playing
jazzlite and wussypop, he was a respected legit jazz tenor sax player named
Ken Garrett.) I wonder if Kenny G got the sidewinder idea from the
brilliant Lester Young, who played tenor with Count Basie. There's a good
photo of Lester Young playing with his mouthpiece extremely sidesaddle on
p. 55 of Paul Lindemeyer's _Celebrating the Saxophone_ (New York: Harvest,
1996). I get nothing but squeaks if I try to play that way, but then I'm
no Lester Young.

Lelia Loban
E-mail: lelialoban@-----.net
Web site (original music scores as audio or print-out):
http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/LeliaLoban

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