12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 174

Date: 06/23/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: The Aurora Bridge and 50th street. Seattle, WA

Notes:

This afternoon between a very busy day of teaching, a rehearsal and a show, I found myself at the intersection of Aurora Ave N and 50th street near the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. The spot is wooded with a large, gravel covered parking area, and because of an event taking place in the Zoo adjacent to it the area was full of people. Despite this I played, at least to my knowledge, for only myself and the trees, going undetected by the people in the parking area below or the tigers and bears only a block away. I’ve recorded in this space during this project 4 times now, and it’s proximately to both nature and the urban environment of cars whizzing by makes it a favorite spot of mine.

During this improvisation I decided to play what I felt was a beautiful chord, made possible only by the momentary flicking open of a side key. The multidimensionality of this chord shape is very apparent during my moments of breath, where the rich clusters fall out. The pitches used, in ascending order were: Concert Eb (muted, sustained tone), A, Eb, E. The fingering was as follows:

(Left Hand) Fork F, A-G keys, Octave, Low B // (Right Hand) F key, Low C. Flick open and closed the side F# key to create the chord shape.

-Neil

The image “A Bronx Morning” accompanying today’s post by Jay Leyda (1931)