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

99 Well it was it was like one of these little lines in here. They’re rewritten and that and I’ve got old emails back from some of the rewritten things. Steven would have some of the earliest drafts, he keeps all that stuff, you might find that interesting. And this chromatic language is the kind of language I want composers to write for me. Let’s get to that. That’s me. That’s my jazz improvisation. Oh, I’m sent him recordings of my jazz improvisations. Many of my CDs, which, you have my CDs, don’t you? JENKINS: I do. I have several. LULLOFF: So that’s where this is coming from. That’s why I believe, and I told Joel Love earlier in the week, and Mischa Zupko, that a composer needs to really sometimes just write for a single individual to really get a piece that will stand out, if that individual has the voice that the composer can hear. JENKINS: Yeah LULLOFF: And I want to hopefully have more projects like this at some point. But I’m kind of picky, and I, you know, about my voice. And I never want to impose anything on anybody. It has to happen because it wants to happen. And that’s why. So, that will be the history of this piece. And then it started forming a little more. The second movement never came to us until three weeks before the premiere, or two weeks. And Kevin Sedatole was sweating it, you will want to ask him about that. And the whole band is sitting there thinking, ‘Are we going to see this second movement? The first movement is hard enough, the third movement is a bitch. What’s going on with the second movement?’ And, it turns out, he took the second movement. Maybe Steven told you. Back to January of 2014, I said ‘Howard, I want to get together with Steve. I think I’m going to go down.’ And I had some money saved up and I was going to go down. And Howard says, listen, I’ll help. And Howard, the person he is, and that’s why we go through the opening of this. He says, ‘I’m going to take of it with frequent flyer miles.’ I want to thank you again. I mean, if I didn’t go down and work with Steven, the second movement would not have existed. GOURWITZ: It’s not the Bryant JENKINS: Yeah, it’s not the same. I mean I know a little bit from talking to him. GOURWITZ: He went down for the weekend, and they just needed to sit and work together, you know? LULLOFF: So I got down there. We had dinner one night with Verena, it was nice. Next morning I brought my horn over. He said, ‘Yeah this is what I thought about the second movement. I just want to hear you improvise. He didn’t talk to me about how he was going to construct it. ‘Could you just take a look at this material, and maybe play off of