Matt Voss Mouthpieces

The work of saxophone mouthpiece craftsman Matt Voss has already been praised by great saxophonists like Andy Farber, Mark Shim, Noah Preminger, and Julius Tolentino, and although I am happy to let their collective authority stand, I am nonetheless overdue in adding my meager voice to the chorus of acclaim. (Full disclosure: Matt is my brother.)

I have been lucky enough to play several of Matt's mouthpieces, including restored and perfected vintage mouthpieces like Goldbeck and Tonemaster, as well as a custom-made hard rubber mouthpiece. His workmanship is excellent, and, as a serious saxophonist in his own right, Matt has an uncanny ability to translate the player's desired sound-concept to the mouthpiece. In creating his custom mouthpiece, for instance, Matt succeeded in turning my vague layman's descriptions of sonic preferences into the concrete reality of chamber design, baffle shape, floor height, tip opening, etc. The mouthpiece plays very comfortably and well in-tune, and it has those often intangible qualities that each saxophonist strives for in his own way. You can hear me playing on it in the short excerpt below. (Any flaws are, of course, entirely my own.)

Surely the superlative mouthpiece craftsman must be a musician first and foremost, with a musician's ear and creative sensibility. Matt possesses this musicality in addition to a thorough knowledge of the science of sound production; a deep understanding of and appreciation for the sounds of the saxophone masters; and a deft and deliberate skill at manipulating the physical dimensions of the mouthpiece.

I look forward to continuing to work with him on my sound.

Six Notes

Surely these are not the only times anyone has ever played

on the tenor saxophone, but I was nonetheless immediately struck by the resemblance when I heard this Ben Solomon recording. Dig Solomon at 1:53 on "You Taught My Heart To Sing" and John Coltrane at 3:06 on "Venus" in the following videos:

Perhaps you could find many similar examples in Solomon's playing, but for some reason this one in particular really jumped out at me. Maybe it's something deeper than just the identical pitch content. Solomon is dealing with Coltrane's music on a profound level, evidently in a class by himself. 

Howard McGhee on Bird

"[Charlie Parker] used to tell me, 'Maggie, listen to this, remember this?' He'd play something from 1918, man. And I said, 'Man, I've heard that before; where's that from?' And he'd tell you, 'Well, this is from such-and-such a march out of Jim [James Reese] Europe's band, and Europe used to play that thing.' And he could play it note for note, and put it in anywhere. You know what I mean? I mean, how in the hell are you going to compete with a mother like that?"

Howard McGhee, in an interview with Scott Deveaux, "Jazz in the Forties," The Black Perspective in Music 15 (1987): 76.

My Favorite Things

The "Best of 2012" lists are out. Rather than recommend studio albums, I would like to underscore the ephemeral nature of the medium and highlight some great, live saxophone performances from the past year that can be heard on the web. 


Ben Solomon. QED.

Noah Preminger. Noah reminds us that saxophone playing should be musical, and he shows how. 

Mike DiRubbo. The alto saxophone is tricky. In the tradition of Charlie Parker and Jackie McLean, DiRubbo plays it with tenor-like toughness.

Antoine Roney. Can't get further from the studio than this.

Ray McMorrin. Listen to a few gripping moments of intense musical feeling here. 

Dezron Douglas Interview

Bassist Dezron Douglas discusses some of his formative musical experiences in this recent interview by The Revivalist. Douglas underscores the influence of Jackie McLean, whom he can be heard playing with as a student at the Hartt School in the video below. 

His new album on the SmallsLIVE label is out now. 

Scruton Reviews Tymoczko

Roger Scruton's writing on music is always illuminating. In this review of Dmitri Tymoczko's A Geometry of Music, he discusses the problems with a generative grammar of music, issues regarding the modeling of music in geometric space, why musicology is not a science, and his reservations about The Pixies. 

Another Thought on Beethoven and Coltrane

Guitarist Etan Haziza has shared with me the following video, in which pianist Brad Mehldau suggests some parallels between Charlie Parker and Mozart, and between John Coltrane and Beethoven (4:05ff.). (Mehldau has also written some interesting essays at his website under the heading, "Creativity in Beethoven and Coltrane.")

It is sometimes pointed out that the history of jazz mirrors that of European art music, only in microcosm, and so these kinds of comparisons are irresistible. I have occasionally thought that an additional parallel between Coltrane and Beethoven has to do with the unexpected importation of voices into typically instrumental forms. 

Coltrane's non-normative introduction of the voice into the ostensibly instrumental format of A Love Supreme (both through actual singing on "Acknowledgment" as well as the text-based melody of "Psalm," as Lewis Porter argues) at least superficially resembles Beethoven's revolutionary use of vocal soloists and choir in the final movement of his 9th Symphony. Coltrane would revisit this unusual addition of voices with the recitation on "Om" and his wordless singing in live performances like "Leo" from Temple University. 

This comparison is not entirely precise, of course. 

Although Beethoven's use of voices in a symphonic setting was not wholly without precursors, its impact was as if it had been. This was not the case with Coltrane's A Love Supreme, since instrumental jazz groups had already used vocalizations and singing in a number of different ways. Just one example is "Original Faubus Fables" from Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus, recorded in 1960, with its satirical lyrics. More importantly, the traditional instrumentation requirements for jazz are obviously not as strict as those for classical-era forms: "vocal jazz" is ubiquitous throughout the history, whereas the symphony in the early 19th century was unmistakably an instrumental form. 

Nonetheless, someone listening to a jazz quartet led by a saxophonist generally does not expect to hear singing or chanting. Furthermore, both A Love Supreme and the 9th Symphony represent career-culminating works, both are perhaps the most popular and influential works of their respective authors, etc.