The Summer Youth Music School (SYMS) at the University of New Hampshire runs each summer. I attended it a couple years back in High School. The second year, I prepared a piece called Au Privave (No. 1) from the Bird Omnibook. This is a transcription of solo by Charlie Parker.

Charlie Parker played on alto, but I played tenor sax, and prepared the version from the B flat book, which was transposed down a fifth. It turns out that this radically alters the fingerings. Parker played insanely fast, and in doing so, he naturally sought out the fingerings that flowed smoothly and naturally on the Saxophone. And then he played them at superhuman speed. It turns out that transposing it up a fifth radically changes some of the fingerings, and also puts many of the notes out of the range of the Saxophone

I bombed the audition.

Jazz improvisation performance. You’ve been preparing. You have mastered your instrument with long tones, scales, and exercises. You have worked on general knowledge of music theory, chords, and the relationship between them. Now what?

During a trip to Manhattan last winter (Jan 2016 or so) I heard some buskers in Union Square station making sounds that were at once familiar and new.

My Saxophone is back from the workshop of Emilio Lyons.  It is a pleasure to play on it.  I would say “like new” but for two things.  First, the horn was twenty years old when I got it, so I never played it new.  Second, Emilio has customized the feel of the horn enough that o suspect it never played like this.  What did he do?

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