15th World Saxophone Congress, July 2009
The web site for the next World Saxophone Congress, which will be held in Bangkok, Thailand, July 8-12, 2009 is now up and running.
You can get information for registration and accommodations. Calls for performances and speakers are out, with deadlines set for later this year. Get up to date by visiting:
Linking Coltrane to Bernstein to Sibelius to Berg
Alex Ross on his blog: The Rest Is Noise, has an interesting audio demonstration of thematic linkage between John Coltrane's A Love Supreme and other celebrated musical masterworks. It just happens that two of the other three pieces which are used in the demonstration are also pieces where the saxophone is used, Leonard Bernstein's On The Town and Alban Berg's Lulu.
How odd is that ? But at the same time so cool.
Here's the link to the article: Sibelius and Coltrane on the town.
André Leroux in concert
André Leroux with bassist Jean Cyr
You can hear a live concert recording of Montreal based tenor sax player André Leroux on the Radio-Canada site. The concert was from the 2007 Off Festival in Montreal.
André is a versatile performer, equally at home in jazz as well as classical playing. His main axe is the tenor sax.
On the site page, you can read a brief interview (in French). Here is the link for the interview. For the concert recording, same link then click on the "Écoutez le concert sur le web>>" button.
My Name is Albert Ayler
A new documentary film about Albert Ayler has just started to be screened in various cities around the US. The director, Kasper Collin writes:
The prophetic free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler, who today is seen as one of the most important innovators in jazz, was obsessed with his radical music and by the thought that people one day would understand it. In 1962 he recorded his first album in Sweden. Eight years later he was found dead in New York's East River, aged 34. This new documentary follows the trail of Ayler from his native town of Cleveland by way of Sweden to New York, meeting family, friends and close colleagues. Ayler himself guides us with his voice and music. Seven years in the making, the film includes newly discovered footage of Ayler and band.
You can find more information at the film's official site as well as the theater site. It has also drawn many reviews including by Matt Zoller Seitz at The New York Times, Anthony Quinn at The Independent, Matt McNally at the BBC Movies, Bruce Bennett at The New York Sun, Eric Monder at Film Journal International, Phil Gallo at Variety, Jamie Garwood at Talking Pictures, Kerstan Mackness at Time Out London, and Hank Shleamer at Time Out New York.
Jean-Yves Fourmeau performance
The Association de Saxophoniste web site has clips of a performance by Jean-Yves Fourmeau accompanied by band. There is no indication of what the piece is and I have never heard before but I do believe it is by André Waignein. It's folllowed by an interview (in French). No matter, he's still a great player.
Here's the link.
Front Page
The saxophone made it on the front page of yesterday's Globe & Mail, Canada's national newspaper.
Uhhh.. Well kinda.
The article was about the possibility of renaming one of Montreal's metro stations for the late Oscar Peterson. And the accompanying photo is Montreal sax busker, Alain Lebeau playing in the Station Lionel-Groulx, the proposed station slated to be renamed.
Here's the link to the article, including the photo.