Posts tagged alto saxophone

Five Paul Desmond interviews and some extras

Apr11
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

From the cool JazzProfessional website, here are five interviews with the iconic alto saxophonist Paul Desmond conducted by Les Tompkins. As always, Desmond is classy, funny, and articulate throughout. “The personality of Paul Desmond” and ”The jazz audience” are from 1963, with “Back in the crook”, “Giant jazzman, gentle wit…”, and “Sax viewpoint” from 1972. Additionally there is a special tribute story from the time of Desmond’s death in 1977, and a page of Desmond quotes. 

From the first interview, Desmond on practicing:

“I feel the necessity for practice, but the results don’t generally justify it. I have a tendency to get bugged by some small thing when I start practising and do one of those Stephen Laycock retroactive bits for five or six hours, ending up playing one interval and working on the intonation or something. After about four hours I come to the job and I can’t play a note! So I’m really better off without practising. I either have to just make it playing the job or forget it. There isn’t time then to get introspective or critical and tear anything apart. You just have to keep going.”

 Click here to read Five Paul Desmond interviews and some extras

—Peter Blasevick

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Lee Konitz on working in the trio format and the importance of a good drummer

Mar26
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

Jon Solomon interviewed the great alto man Lee Konitz for the Denver Westword blog last week. Konitz talks about recent gigs, free jazz, Charlie Parker, and more. From the interview:

How important is playing with a good drummer to you?

As with any of the instruments in the rhythm section, it’s vitally important. The drummer, since he’s not using notes so to speak unless he tunes his drums carefully, is probably… Well, I don’t know exactly what I’m trying to say right now. Because of the lack of notes, the rhythm is more important and things like that.

Click here to read Lee Konitz on working in the trio format and the importance of a good drummer

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A Fireside Chat With Bud Shank

Jan08
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

Today I’m linking to a great 2003 AllAboutJazz interview with alto saxophonist Bud Shank, who made his name early on in the West Coast Jazz scene and Stan Kenton. In this piece, Shank talks about his early years, playing the flute, and a bunch of his contemporaries. Here is a excerpt about fellow West-Coaster Chet Baker:

Chet Baker was a strange case. I always got along well with him. There are other people who didn’t. The only problem I had with Chet is I would go for a couple of years and not see him and every time I would see him, the first thing he would say is ‘loan me twenty dollars,’ which I never saw again.

He had a lot of notoriety and a lot of fame at an early age, more than he could handle and that is why I think he took the road to avail all that and he did it so violently and so much that he was in jail in Italy and he was about to be the next James Dean. They were about to make a movie star out of him. That I how far he got up in the popularity kind of thing and he blew it all because he couldn’t face it.

All he wanted to be was just a player. He would go through periods when he was living in Europe when he would take the Concord to fly back to New York. He was really up there. Italians were really serious about him and that is why he was in Italy when he got thrown in the slammer for a year.

Click here to read A Fireside Chat With Bud Shank

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A 2001 DownBeat Profile of Lee Konitz

Jan02
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

Another interesting Ted Panken interview. Today is a fascinating 2001 interview with the great Lee Konitz. The legendary alto saxophonist and Cool Jazz pioneer talks about his career and life, including this great bit about seeing Ornette Coleman:

“I remember going with Lennie Tristano and Warne Marsh to hear him at the Five Spot one night, and not really knowing what to make of it. Ornette came up and asked me if I wanted to sit in. I said, ‘What do we play?’ or something like that, and somehow I guess I didn’t sound like I really wanted to sit in, so he didn’t pursue it. Sorry I didn’t. At that time, like a lot of people, I was resenting somehow this fact that he was eliminating everything that I’d spent my years trying to hone. But I gradually got over resenting it. Ornette’s concept is extraordinarily inventive and original, and of course had a great influence on a lot of the music’s development. He tried to explain some of the harmolodic theory on an airplane flight when we were sitting together. I said, ‘Wait til we get down on the ground, please.’ I really said that, because it’s so subjective that I didn’t want to face it up in the air. I never really learned his tunes. I’m too busy playing ‘All the Things You Are.’ By Jerome Kern. That guy must be turning over!”

Click here to read A 2001 DownBeat Profile of Lee Konitz

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Benny Carter in 2002: Life Is Carter’s Main Instrument Now

Nov05
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

I’m going to post a few interviews this week that are hosted on Mel Martin’s great site. Here is a cool 2002 interview with Benny Carter by Don Heckman for the Los Angeles Times on the eve of Carter’s 95th birthday. From the interview:

Carter, sitting quietly, smilingly insists that he is “really not a good interview.” But that’s true only if one is seeking the sort of sensationalism that has often surrounded the jazz world rather than the soft-spoken insights that he has to offer. Why, for example, did Ken Burns, despite having interviewed him extensively, find so little of Carter’s accumulated knowledge worthy of inclusion in his massive jazz documentary?

“There’s a lot that’s valuable in what he did,” Carter says in typically courteous fashion. “But I don’t understand why there’s such a need to emphasize all the darker aspects of jazz. It was the same with that Clint Eastwood film, ‘Bird.’ I didn’t know Charlie Parker well, but I spent some time with him, and he was articulate and well spoken with a lot of curiosity about music and the world. But the only way he seems to be depicted is as a junkie. And that’s not the full picture.”

Click here to read Benny Carter in 2002: Life Is Carter’s Main Instrument Now

— Peter Blasevick

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Bobby Watson and the Jazz Messengers

Oct25
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

This week I will be listing some interviews from the very cool site IRockJazz.com, a really cool online Jazz journal with interviews, reviews, and a lot more.

IRockJazz caught altoist Bobby Watson on his 2011 visit to Chicago, and he discussed how he got his big break with the Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in NY:

— Peter Blasevick

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Lou Donaldson: My first affair

Oct04
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

Here is a cool 1981 interview with alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson from the JazzProfessional website. In this excerpt he talks candidly about his style:

LD: Basically, my playing is a cross between Charlie Parker and Johnny Hodges—you know, the people that I listened to when I was coming up. See, when I play my ballads, I play almost identically like Johnny Hodges. A lot of younger musicians don’t know this; they say: “How do you do this? What is that?” But I say: “Well, it’s hard for me to explain it to you, unless you heard Johnny Hodges and Lester Young, people like that.” That’s the way they played ballads, and it’s natural for me to pattern my style slightly after that.

Click here to read Lou Donaldson: My first affair

—Peter Blasevick

 

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Branford Marsalis on Ken Burns’ Jazz 1996

Sep20
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

Ken Burns’ epic Jazz has it’s many detractors, and for a whole bunch of good reasons. However, despite its shortcomings, there are so many great interviews from the series. This one, with saxophonist Branford Marsalis, is a long (35 pages!), wide ranging interview on every aspect of jazz imaginable. Here is Branford on the saxophone in jazz:

“Well, the saxophone is, is the jazz instrument, as far as I’m concerned there is no other jazz instrument. Louis Armstrong played trumpet and at that time, that was the jazz instrument. But, the music started to change and the saxophones became a focal point in big band swing music. But when Charlie Parker came on the scene, he made the saxophone king. And we’re still the kings. We, we run the show.”

Click here to read Branford Marsalis on Ken Burns’ Jazz 1996

-Peter Blasevick

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Phil Woods 2007

Sep01
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

In this quick backstage 2007 interview with WAER Music Director during the Jazz In The Square festival, Phil Woods discusses playing with big bands, his stints with Dizzy, Monk, Quincy Jones, and Benny Goodman, and his album The Great American Songbook II .

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Jimmy Heath 2009

Aug02
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

In the first part of this two part interview with Marc Myers at JazzWax.com, Jimmy Heath talks about growing up in two cities, starting on the alto sax, joining Howard McGhee in 1948 and how he and his brother Percy came to the attention of Dizzy Gillespie in 1949. In Part 2, the the 82-year-old tenor saxophonist talks about Miles Davis and the niche he carved out, playing the baritone saxophone on two recordings, his admiration for trumpeter Kenny Dorham, his incarceration, and how Chet Baker wound up recording an album in 1956 that featured Jimmy’s jailhouse compositions.

From the piece:

“Jimmy’s career began in the mid-1940s, and he played with virtually every modern jazz trumpeter, including Howard McGhee, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham, Lee Morgan, Art Farmer and Freddie Hubbard. Jimmy’s career was interrupted by a four-year prison sentence for narcotics possession in the mid-1950s, a period that would have destroyed most artists. Instead, Jimmy continued to compose and play during his incarceration, and he emerged determined to succeed and flourish.”

Click here to read Jimmy Heath 2009 

 

 

http://www.jazzwax.com/2009/10/interview-jimmy-heath-part-1.html

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