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

116 OK…now just spin that out obsessively and to something. And put some ostinatos under it to give it some rhythmic regularity. And the other things is, when you have that element happening somewhere, you can do some other stuff that’s not necessarily directly related but it will feel related, because you have some thread of that color still in the fabric. I don’t know. I’m talking a lot, I don’t really have an answer for you. JENKINS: The compositional process to me is just fascinating. And that was one of the things, sitting down with this, the more I’ve sat down with it and looked through it….the end of the third movement…223 to the end. You start the Solace chord progression starting a little bit, then pounding between the Gb major 9 to the chord built on the Creston, then to the Gb major 9, then the chord built on the Creston motive. I was like, ‘This was really cool!’ And it never sounds contrived when it’s going through. But then you look at it and it’s like, ‘Oh, this is just the Solace progression going up. You put it in a different tonality and finish it in a third tonality. I just find it fascinating. BRYANT: Well thanks. Part of it is finding intuitively looking for a melodic shape where I want it to go and then, forcing the existing motive material or the Solace chord progression, those sorts of things into that shape. Like, OK, it can serve it this way but I want to hit these pitches and I want to end up here. How can I sort of pour that concrete into these molds I’ve made and somehow it always works out. I don’t know why or how. JENKINS: Just out of curiosity with that point, that ending. It basically works its way up from that first F minor and ultimately ends up in B major if I remember right at 238. There’s just like a general progression of rising tonality. Was that the idea with that? BRYANT: Yes, I mean there are these very simple levers to increase excitement as you build. Range, tessitura. Also kind of planning out, ‘I need to end up here and this is already freaking high, I shouldn’t go any higher than that.’ And it ended up a little higher than I would have liked. That final note in the solo part is….it’s…..it’s really freaking high. JENKINS: (Laughs) BRYANT: I could never have played it. But trying to work that out so that I don’t have to cheat at some point and bring it back down or kill the moment. The overall architecture is everything so that it really feels organic and planned. And sometimes I’ll get ‘OK, that’s going to end up here, I need to move this down here. So now I need to work backwards from there. How do I make it feel natural to get to that point? And usually that connection point or that solution is way on back in the piece. JENKINS: Yeah BRYANT: I will make big structural changes if it’s necessary to make the flow work exactly like I want it to work. That’s one of the biggest ways I chose tonal centers and where I put things. It’s all based on instruments and their idiomatic ranges. You know, a lot of my pieces, it’s all about the big horn line and where that fits the horns, and everybody has to fit around them. JENKINS: (Laughs)