Music Teacher sax music review July 2006

Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band
Play-Along Series
Alto or Tenor Saxophone
Belwin Jazz, BN25245 £19.95

Selections from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Alto Sax and Tenor Sax
Music by Patrick Doyle and John Williams
Alfred Publishing Co Ltd ISBN 0-7390-4009-X £10.95

Kids Play Blues
Alto Saxophone
Klass de Jong and Jaap Kastelein
De Haske ISBN 90-431-2284-X £10.95

Humoresques
Solo Saxophone
Stephen Morland
Broadbent & Dunn Ltd 11213 £4.95

Elegy and Fugue
Tenor saxophone and piano
Stephen Morland
Broadbent & Dunn Ltd 11211 £5.95

Easy Winners
55 well known tunes
Peter Lawrence
Brass Wind Publications ISMN M-57027-100-9

Three Blues
Alto Saxophone and Piano
Alan Bullard
Spartan Press SP781 £6.99

Feeling Good
15 Attractive Pieces with Piano Accompaniment
Leslie Searle
De Haske ISBN 9 789043 122788 £10.95

La Fleur et l'oiseau
for alto or tenor saxophone and piano
Jean Sichler
Leduc AL29 596 £13.95

Strophes
for alto saxophone and piano
Pascal Proust
Leduc AL29 593 £11.95

Compositions for Alto Saxophone Vol 2
Compositions for Tenor Saxophone Vol 2
Intermediate to advanced
Graham Lyons
Useful Music 123 £9.95

Structure
for solo alto saxophone
Dariusz Przybylski

Prank
for solo alto saxophone
Robert Kosek
published together PWM Edition ISMN M-2740-0202-2

The latest pile of saxophone music that was sent to me this time included one of the best collections of pieces I have seen, certainly my students at Birmingham Conservatoire were desperate to get hold of the book to try them out when I told them what arrived. You may have come across the Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band; I am ashamed to say I had not. It has to be one of the tightest Big Bands around. Based in L.A., it has a stellar line-up including Eric Marienthal on Alto, Wayne Bergeron on trumpet, Bernie Dressel, drums; I am a convert now. This collection consists of ten 1st Alto/Soprano or ten 1st Tenor parts from the Big Phat Band repertoire with solo chord changes plus the relevant recording on CD, minus the improvised solos. What an opportunity; being able to play along with players better than yourself is one of the best ways to improve and if you can keep up with some of the playing on this you are doing really well, some track are HARD and FAST. The collection includes performance tips from Gordon Goodwin and Eric Marienthal. Big Band play-along doesn't get much better than this, and it is available for trumpet, trombone and drums. Quite expensive but a must-buy for intermediate/advanced sax-players.

The next collection brought me back down with a bit of a bump. Selections from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a collection of themes from the afore-mentioned film arranged for either alto or tenor with a play-along CD. It is beautifully packaged with lots of glossy stills from the film, and the tunes themselves are well presented. It is pitched at about grade 4, some pieces towards grade 5 standard. The alto parts are in a good range but the tenor book has too much low register playing to be much fun. My big problem with this publication is the orchestral arrangements on the play-along CD. It is a soupy, overblown mess of sampled string sound, how the poor bloke who recorded the sax parts kept in time I don't know and it doesn't help that he has a rather unattractive sound on both alto and tenor. A piano part is available which would probably be a better option. If you are into the Harry Potter films and like the music then it is for you but personally I found the collection pretty dreary.

Kids Play Blues is an excellent collection of original pieces for junior players from De Haske. It comes, of course, with a CD backing and contains thirteen tunes. They are aimed at pupils working through their first tutor book and all they are all based on the blues within different rock and pop settings. I liked this book, the tunes are well written, well laid out a good big stave, using a narrow range of notes but keeps things rhythmically interesting and uses lots of repetition. The CD backings are the best feature. The pupil plays along with what must be real instruments with great guitar and drum sounds and a good feel too.

Next, two new works from Stephen Morland (aka Stephen Pierce the fine London based clarinettist) whose previous works for saxophone are becoming well-known repertoire pieces. Stephen has developed a distinctive voice in his composing; modern, contemporary and atonal is the texture throughout although he keeps within the standard range and does not go for extended techniques. His writing brings to my mind compositions of another fine clarinettist, Rudolph Jettel. Both these pieces are technically challenging but not impossibly difficult and are at about grade 8 in standard. Humoresques consist of three short movements, Coranto, Pesante and Tarantella. They are compositionally well constructed and musically have a lot of depth although Stephen's view of what a Humoresque is must be very different form mine. These pieces seemed anything but fanciful and lightweight. Elegy and Fugue is a slightly easier piece although the slow lyrical beginning of the Elegy will test many tenor players’ intonation. The second movement is a moderately fast fugue. It is great that attractive, well-written, serious pieces are being written with the tenor saxophone in mind. Both publications will be excellent test or audition pieces.

Easy Winners by Peter Lawrence is a collection of 55 short pieces, all really well known tunes. This is is a perfect book for those pupils who are just past the beginner stages. Somewhere in this book you will find a tune even the most recalcitrant pupil will want to have a go at. They range from the Wallace and Gromit theme and the Grange Hill theme to James Bond, Rule Britannia and Polovtsian Dance. There are lots of books like this out there but I think this is excellent. The tunes are short, well presented, with appropriate dynamics and articulation. My copy did not come with the accompanying CD and I would have like to have heard that. A piano accompaniment book is also available. An excellent book that easily wins my vote.

Alan Bullard is a busy guy; I seem to be constantly reviewing his original compositions. Three Blues are three contrasting pieces all inspired by the blues though not actually blues pieces themselves. They are at about grade five to six in standard. What is most welcome is that this time Spartan Press have done a very good job of presenting the music; clear articulation and dynamics and a decent cover! Normally I really like Alan's pieces and although these are well constructed, with clever developments and modulations, I felt rather lukewarm about them. I can see where he is coming from, taking a blues cliché and constructing something new around it, but I found the clichés too clichéd or something. However Alan has lots of fans and normally I am one so worth a look, you may enjoy them.

Feeling Good by Leslie Searle is a collection of fifteen short, original pieces in various light music styles pitched at about grade 3 to 4. They are presented fairly well though rather short on dynamics. I admit to finding it hard to get very exited by this publication of tunes that I think are nice but rather cheesy. The play along CD has a demonstration version and they found just about the “straightest” sounding sax player I have heard in a long time. The guy can't swing for toffee, it would be fine of he were playing the Glazunov Concerto but he won't get any gigs doing light music and this in a book that claims it will “show you the ropes”. The overall effect is rather uninspiring. Also I find it irritating when the publisher claims that simply having the chords printed over the piano part means you can “easily play the pieces with a group”. I think that teachers now expect more from the books they buy; the standard has gone up, see what I say about Graham Lyons' book below.

Two pieces have sent from Leduc Edition, La Fleur et l'oiseau and Strophes. They have been created to be test or examination pieces for students at music schools. The first is a short, single movement, romantic, programmatic piece that is hard to dislike; the composer has a background in church music and that comes through quite clearly. I would have put it at grade 6 were it not for the couple of high Gs, which makes it problematic for many young players. The piece is also transposed for tenor and actually puts the piece into a better register although the whole piece starts on a low C. The composer is trying to hedge his bets and satisfies neither instrument completely. Strophes is the more interesting piece. I would pitch it at about grade 7 to 8. The four short movements are rhythmically and tonally more complex and modern sounding with changes of meter and rubato. This makes for an excellent test piece demanding good interpretation without the student having to conquer the extremes of the registers.

Graham Lyons has produced vol 2 of his popular collections of original solo pieces with piano or CD accompaniment. As with volume 1, all the pieces have strong tunes and good harmonies. The nineteen pieces in this collection are longer and range from about easy grade 5 to nearly grade 8. Again Graham is using the latest ideas in computer technology so along with the book you have a CD that not only includes the backing tracks that can be played on a CD player, a computer or an MP3 player, but also the accompaniments on pdf files for printing out which have concert as well as transposed parts, and some very nice extras. I found four duets, two by John Robert Brown, two by Graham, a trio for alto, tenor and bari, and a piece for Jazz combo, with all the parts ready to print out. If this book isn't a bargain I don't know what is. The only niggle I have is the abrupt endings of the CD backings, and a rather artificial sound, but at this price you can't have everything.

Finally two pieces for unaccompanied saxophone from Poland. These are winning entries in the 2005 Tadeusz Ochlewski Composition Competition. Structure is a one-movement piece in a freely improvised style. There is no strict meter; rather the piece is a series of musical gestures using multiphonics, the odd slap-tongue, flurries of notes and exaggerated dynamics. Typical fare for avant-garde music but it holds together well. Definitely one for the music college standard or professional player. Prank is easier to play, more rhythmic, and falls within the standard range for the saxophone. Again it uses a series of musical gestures to create the whole. The piece starts simply and melodically, building in tempo and rhythmic complexity as the composition develops to an extended passage of rising sextuplets. Both are good additions to the saxophone repertoire.