12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 189

Date: 07/08/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Practice Room A at South Whidbey High School. Langley, WA (Whidbey Island)

Notes:

This afternoon I worked with rougher, unfinished textures to try and create tiny microcosmic worlds with a wide range of color inside of them. My improvisation today is my shortest recording to date on this project, and was intended to be a very focused, bright burst of color. This piece uses a single fingering, which traditionally produces a very stable, de-tuned major chord multiphonic, but in this case was used to create a much wider range of sound. This fingering was as follows:

(Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Low C# // (Right Hand) F-E-D keys, Low C, Side C

A month ago I participated in a concert with the legendary saxophonist Roscoe MItchell. In his adaptation of Nonaah for Cello Quartet, the torrent of sound rises to a climax in the final pitch of the piece, which held out at full volume in a terrifying chord which then slowly, achingly falls away into silence. Listening to it from the audience I felt like I was a body at the shore line being uncontrollably pulled out into the ocean. There was a power to it that simply amazed me, and during this improvisation the source of my ending almost certainly stemmed from this concept.

-Neil

The image “Drawing for Tansient Rainbow” by Cai Guo-Qiang (2003)