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

113 Appendix B. Interview with Steven Bryant Conducted by Chet Jenkins March 08, 2018 over Skype JENKINS: Thank you very much again for agreeing to do this, I really appreciate it! BRYANT: Sure JENKINS: Obviously a lot of biography has already been done on you so I’m not going to ask you anything about that kind of stuff, we will just go right with the composition itself. I’m meeting with Joe and Howard on Sunday but I was just kind of curious from your perspective or from your standpoint, if you could tell me a little bit about the genesis of the commissioning of the work from your side? BRYANT: Yeah I mean I guess it was sort of inevitable that I would write a sax concerto at some point since I was a saxophone player. But I remember the moment I was like “yeah I’m going to write it and I’m going to write it for this guy”. I was at the ABA convention in 2012, I guess it's exactly 6 years ago this week. JENKINS: (chuckles) BRYANT: I was in Indianapolis and Joe was playing Mackey’s Soprano Saxophone Concerto with, I think it was UT Austin, but Kevin Sedatole was conducting as a guest conductor, and I knew Mackey’s Concerto, he was an old friend. JENKINS: Sure BRYANT: But just the way Joe could play so extraordinarily softly, sitting in that hall and filling this really, really big hall with this sound, and yet it be just on the threshold of hearing it. Something about that moment, I thought, Oh there is potential here for something I really want to make. So I think it was that night we were all out at some bar or club…I don’t know. It was strange because it was not the sort of place that Howard or Kevin or me or Joe would ever go… JENKINS: (laughs) BRYANT: ….thumping house music, and all that sort of thing over drinks, we were talking about it and all of us were there at that moment and I said I wanted do this and they wanted to do it and it was born out of that moment. JENKINS: Very cool.