A Conductor’s and Performer’s Guide to Steven Bryant’s Concerto for Alto Saxophone - Chester Jenkins

104 wanted students who had great ears. But I also wanted students to stretch their ears, just like had to stretch myself to do this piece. JENKINS: Yeah GOURWITZ: You gave them once in a lifetime opportunities. I mean, Joe’s a great teacher. You can listen to recordings and take it off a record, but what kids can be intimately involved with the creation and they know their beloved professor, and I thought it was terrific. LULLOFF: And now they can use this on a resume. They have something in print from Steven. Steven was thrilled, took a little while. Patience is a virtue. Liz Ames did a terrific job in the piano reduction of this. I have not heard the piano reduction, but I’ve heard it is excellent and I’ve looked at it. JENKINS: Well, she’s done previously amazing work. LULLOFF: Oh, she’s amazing. It’s a true gift to have to do that. And Steven worked with her thank God. And Liz, and for the record, was so patient with me, in the sense of getting all the details right, because it took me a while to kind get back into this given the schedule to get the piano reduction out. But the reduction I think, very minimal discrepancies. You know, jazz is difficult to transcribe, when I think it’s accurately done, but I do want, for the record, for those who play this piece to reach beyond what the music says. Or what the printed ink is, and improvise. Even if they just take my melody there. And that’s one of twelve examples of recordings. I still have those recordings on my Drop Box, I’d be happy to share with you all the different recordings, if you’re interested. That goes beyond your scope probably. But it’s interesting. But when we did this, one of my students, Julian Velasco just sat there, and Sergei Kvitko, the brilliant engineer on that CD, just sat there. After the recording session with the band, Kevin said, ‘OK Joe, you can record the cadenza. Why don’t you get out of here in 15 minutes, I’m sure you’re going to take the first or second cut.’ Well, like me, I’m a perfectionist, anal retentive perfectionist. I recorded 12 or something cadenzas. And some sucked and some were good. And I don’t know. After a while you’ve got to stop being Beethoven who would repeat things all the time, trying to get it right all the time, and you just put your work down and say, ‘Hey, this is me.’ And I ended up taking I think take 1 or 2 or 3. Or maybe it was a combination of a couple, but they were long stretches, they were not put together, sliced and diced as much. And I was very happy with it. And I think it represents the improvisations. The purpose of the improvisations are to represent the motives of the piece a little bit. Particularly the cadenza needs to be more of a development of the first opening three cadenzas. The opening three cadenzas try to set the stage. And let’s move on to something that I think is important that makes another aspect of this piece work, and I hope you can follow my thinking here.