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

15 original music continues on at that pace. Bryant states, “…those little bursts of fast tempo stuff, those are all direct transcriptions, where I would write the slow music and I would plop in a fragment of his improvisations in there, over it, and that disjunct, two world feeling was literally what was happening, and that tempo was about the same as the 3 rd movement because that’s where it’s from.” 31 Bryant also found another way to incorporate Lulloff’s improvisations. In the second movement, from measure 118-132, the saxophone solo line is a direct transcription of Lulloff’s improvisation, only taken out of time. Bryant describes it, “Page 44, so that whole passage through 132 up until the credenza, that’s just a transcription of something he played. I still have all these files somewhere, I don’t throw anything away. So that was, if I recall correctly, that is literally what he played, but all this was over the 3 rd movement. So at a different tempo. So what I did is took the file out, took out all the reference stuff, and just played it out of context, but then I started improvising these long gossamer harmonies around it, based on it. And it just ‘Like oh, this is fun!’ I mean, it’s a whole different direction. Because I was recontextualizing it and writing music around someone else’s notes but those person’s notes were based on my notes to start with. You know, so it was run through a Joe Lulloff filter.” 32 The second movement was the last movement to be completed, just weeks before the premiere. 33 The world premieree performance of the Concerto for Alto Saxophone by Steven Bryant, commissioned by Howard Gourwitz took place on April 22, 2014, with Joe Lulloff, 31 Steven Bryant, interview by author, phone interview, March 8, 2018. 32 Ibid. 33 Howard Gourwitz and Joe Lulloff, interview by author, Cincinnati, OH, March 11, 2018.