Baritone saxophonist Eden Bareket shares videos of some interesting and unusual things he practices, often working on extreme altissmo. He has gathered them all in a YouTube playlist to check out. If you’re looking for some new things to spend time on in the shed there are some excellent ideas here.
Check out the full playlist at: http://bit.ly/Practicebarisax
Below is an example from the playlist:
Leo Parker is definitely among the greats when it comes to baritone saxophonists, although he is mostly known only to dedicated baritone saxophonists. He passed away at a somewhat early age and only produced a few different albums under his own name. But fortunately we now have a new resource for finding recordings with Leo on them.
Baritone saxophonist Frank Basile has completed was must have been a massive project to compile Leo Parker’s complete discography. Including all recordings he appeared on, both as a sideman, co-leader, and as a leader. The amount of research that Frank did is astounding and this is a great document for those of us interested in the original Leo P.
You can check out the fruit of Frank’s labor over at jazzdiscography.com:
http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Artists/Leo-Parker/Leo-Parker-Complete-Discography.php
Head on over to the transcriptions page to check it out!
While we have done some more recent interviews with great baritone saxophonists, there are some excellent historical interviews floating around the internet and we’d like to highlight some of them for you.
Rampone & Cazzani is an Italian company that has been making instruments for well over a century. Recently they have been putting quite a bit of work into their saxophones, and my opinion is that this is one of the finest modern baritone saxophones available anywhere. In this era where there are more new saxophone companies than ever before this is quite an achievement.
One of the key things that makes the Rampone horn different is that it is completely hand built. It comes from a small artisan workshop in Italy. The bells are hand hammered and everything made by hand. Many of the newer saxophones are all built in factories in Asia. Even ones that claim to be hand assembled have quite a bit of machine-based work in them. Repairmen have grumbled about build quality, materials, and repair-ability of these horns, although that is not something I’m overly qualified to comment on.
The modern Asian horns all play pretty well, they are generally priced fairly well and look great – but they all play exactly the same. (To clarify I mean the horns coming out of China and Taiwan, less so Japanese insturments). If you blindfolded me I’m not sure I could easily tell them apart. None of them really stands out as different and honestly they are all basically copies of Selmers – with some small differences here and there and a huge range of aesthetic finishes and options. Not to mention more and more keys (do you really need a high G key?). As baritone players even the companies that are making decent horns these days either don’t put as much time into their baritone, don’t offer a professional level horn, or only offer a Low A option.
Rampone offers their baritone with many different options, finishes, materials and offers both a Low A and Low Bb variation. I’ve had a chance to play the horn many times and it’s by far my favorite modern horn to play and very comparable to my vintage Conn baritone, albeit with modern keywork and so many fewer dings and dents. I also recently had a chance to speak with Claudio who along with his father are the makers of these new horns. He is incredibly knowledgeable about saxophones and modern players and did not have the snake-oil salesman aura about him that a lot of other modern horn manufacturers do.
The folks over at Rovner are handling the US distribution for Rampone horns and have been travelling around to some shows with them to let people try them out. If you get a chance, I would really recommend trying these unique horns.
You can take a look at them over on their site as well:
http://www.ramponecazzani.com/eng/2009j_ag.html
Jazz is a disproportionately male genre, at least in the US and I suspect most places. As such, it is unfortunately not shocking, but disappointing, to learn that the ‘scene’ or industry is rife with sexism against women.
Sometimes its struggling with the absurd assumption that women can’t play as well, and sometimes its just dealing with everyday stupid and inappropriate behavior from teachers, colleagues, promoters, or anyone else – I’m sure many other scenarios that I can’t even imagine.
I would very much like to present Lauren Sevian‘s recent story about her own experiences:
Sexism in Jazz, From the Conservatory to the Club: One Saxophonist Shares Her Story
Playing and promoting jazz, improvised music, and even just acoustic music is already an uphill battle. The negativity from sexism doesn’t help anyone and can be incredibly damaging. Lauren’s story is just one of many, and honestly by far probably not the worst out there, hopefully with the recent attention to this issue things will change for the better.
In a lesson with Ronnie Cuber, I once asked him if he like Leo Parker. He laughed and told me that he couldn’t listen to Leo Parker or he would start trying to sound too much like him! I guess that is as close to a compliment as he would go. Gary Smulyan and almost every other baritonist of note seems to speak highly of him as well.
Joe Temperley passed away but thanks to some wonderful videos from Lincoln Center’s Jazz Academy we can continue to learn from Mr. Temperley. Check out the 3 videos where he discusses his warm up exercises and sound production.
Sinton is part of a new band called “muscianer” and they have a debut album “Slow Learner.” I recently saw Josh and he was kind enough to give me a copy to listen to. I think anyone who appreciates modern music and is looking to hear baritone saxophone in a new and different way will really appreciate it. The video below will give a quick sample of what can be found on the album. The album officially arrives September 25th, you can pre-order it here.
musicianer is also embarking on a tour for the release. Click here if you’d like to see a list of shows.
We have finally gotten around to updating the site’s layout. It should work much butter on mobile and smaller devices. Apologies for any oddities you see during the transition as we are still fleshing everything out. If you see anything strange or have any suggestions, please head on over to the contact page and let us know!