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

105 You know, how many times do you hear a piece that they say, oh yeah, well, we want to have a jazz influenced piece? And I told that to Steve, I said, part of me, as Howard so much said, is jazz influenced. It sounds like jazz, but it’s square. I think part of that responsibility is on the performer. To make sure that he or she renders the right type of style with the right kind of sound and the right kind of approach to their instrument at any given time. It needs to be well thought out, it needs to be genuine. It’s not something you can study necessarily. It’s not something I can teach you in six weeks, or six months. You have to actually go live in the clubs. You have to live the life. You have to march in marching band. That’s important! Again, you have to march in the marching band if you want to understand what commitment is. And want to share the commitment. That’s what we do when we study music. And you do the same, I know you do. And this is where I think the jazz is. It needs to be more of an intrical part of the piece. It has to be an underlying fabric of the piece that might emerge. Denisov did a great job with the Sonata. First movement is more structured and more contemporary standpoint of serialism. Then the second elements introduces some jazz elements and some elements of Messiaen and all those guys who were kind of influence. And the third movement, in my opinion, is outright jazz movement, but with a classical construction. Or more classical contemporary construction. Not letting the jazz player improvise. That was not something done. I wanted a concerto that pushed us to improvise. Because a complete musician, a complete saxophonist is somebody who has got to be able to teach that in some way, shape or form, and hopefully demonstrate it. And these kids here are starting to do that. You know, Taimur Sullivan does it a lot. My kids do that. We force them to do it. Jeff Leoffert, you know, played this piece too. That’s when Steven gave me that second movement, 2 to 3 weeks to go, ‘By the way, you’ll get it, you’ll improvise it.’ And at first I went, there’s no chord changes. Then I went, ‘Ahhhhh’ JENKINS: (Laughs) LULLOFF: Ok, leave me alone. You know? I was just worried because I didn’t have enough time for it to soak into me. And so if you hear the subsequent recordings, you could get recordings from the University of Oklahoma and Jonathan Nichol, Oklahoma State, every place that I went through here, and you’ll hear the development of ideas that I kept working on, before I actually recorded the piece. The many times I played it with MSU, interesting. I mean, I have a preacher improvisation. You know how preachers get up there (I love southern gospel preachers), you know (garbled preacher speak) kind of speaking, kind of working ideas out like a composer might. And I think I really settled on that I have certain motives that I kind of settle on, but then I kind of go off on certain things. I would love Branford (Marsalis) to play this piece. I told Branford a couple of times (not last night), but a couple times he should do this piece. So I don’t know.