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(U.S.A.)
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Sky Scrapings (1997) [saxophone alto et piano / alto saxophone and piano] avec la collaboration de: with the participation of: Don Freund, piano |
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| Thomas Walsh is Assistant Professor of Saxophone and Jazz Sudies at Indiana University in Bloomington. He is an active performer of both jazz and classical music, having appeared in solo recitals, chamber groups, orchestras, jazz small groups, big bands, and Broadway shows. He has performed in Europe, Central America, and across the United States.
Walsh's first classical saxophone compact disc, "Shaking the Pumpkin", was released in 1998 on the RIAX label. About "Shaking the Pumpkin", Saxophone Journal writes, "Do not let this CD slide through your hands.... Thomas Walsh is an exceptional performer and an outstanding saxophonist.... It makes no difference which saxophone is in his hands, they are all equal clay to his touch." Walsh has also recorded with Eugene Rousseau and the Winds of Indiana, the Dominic Spera Big Band, the Eugene Rousseau Big Band, and jazz vocalists Wanda Stafford and Janiece Jaffe. Walsh is on the faculty of the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshops and the Bands of America summer workshop and is a Yamaha Performing Artist. He has taught at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, Purdue University, and Millikin University. Walsh holds Doctor of Music and Master of Music degrees in Saxophone Performance and a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies from Indiana University where he studied with distinguished classical saxophonist Eugene Rousseau and renowned jazz educator David Baker. |
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| Sky Scrapings is a subversive Serenade for Alto Saxophone and Piano. Subversive, in that none of the material ends up going in the direction it appears to be pointed.
Transient Fixations begins as a rondo between a nonchalant opening tune and rougher, slightly faster music, but the movement prematurely dissolves in swirls of descending dissipation. Hypertoccata is marked "electric, 'wired', feverish," but its opening section is abruptly displaced by torrential unison scales jigsawed against a driving flurry. In Colliding Cantilenas tunes which suggest cocktail piano, "chaste" early Renaissance-style, and pop ballad abut one another, flanking a scurrying middle section marked "anxious, fugitivo (chased)." Gathering begins easy and buoyant, but soon turns darker and threatening, careening through rough juxtapositions to a cumulative cataclysm. In the aftermath, a morphing multiphonic leads to a little Adieu, short, simple, and tinged with nostalgia. |
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