Saxophones: Not just Jazz Instruments

As a saxophone player, I find saxophones to be some of the best instruments there are, in terms of tone quality, versatility, and overall sound. Although they lack the many years of repertoire that instruments like violin and oboe have, there is plenty of recent saxophone music that sounds nice and makes great competition pieces.

Often people think of saxophone as a jazz instrument. And in many cases, that’s true. However, saxophone is not just a purely jazz instrument; there are many famous classical saxophonists, like Claude Delangle, that have made and continue to make a good name for classical saxophone. There are colleges and universities that have classical saxophone schools as well as jazz saxophone schools. In general however, people consider saxophone to be a jazz instrument because the classical side is not as well known due to the big name jazz players like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane.

I’m not a big fan of combo jazz, I prefer the big band setting, but saxophone got a good portion of its fame from combo players. Charlie Parker and John Coltrane are some of the more famous players of the peak of the jazz era but there are many thousands out there that write their own music and perform nowadays. Many jazz professors are saxophone players, and many classical saxophone players, but not all, play jazz saxophone as well. Jazz saxophone is wanted much more than classical saxophone; someone will pay to hear a saxophonist play John Coltrane but will probably not pay to hear a saxophonist play Christian Lauba (although Lauba is good, his modern repertoire is an acquired taste). Additionally, there is more permanent work for saxophonists in a traveling big-band than there is for a saxophonist in a major symphony, as not many symphonic works include saxophone parts.

Personally, I am a big fan of Claude Delangle and classical saxophone in general. I’m not that into jazz saxophone, probably on account of having not practiced enough to get very good at improvising. A few years ago when I started taking lessons from my current teacher, he suggested that I get Claude Delangle’s album, Under the Sign of the Sun. It is one of my favorite classical albums and has much of the repertoire that I have learned in the past few years including Tableaux de Provence by Paule Maurice, Concertino da Camera by Jacques Ibert, Scaramouche by Darius Milhaud, and most recently the Tomasi Concerto. Before I’ve performed any of these pieces for a competition, I’ve listened to the recordings multiple times and tried to imitate the parts of Claude Delangle’s playing that I like.

I especially enjoy playing saxophone in a wind band environment. I’ve played in the school’s wind ensemble for a while and have done summer camps, IMEA district, and soon IMEA state. I like the place of the saxophone in the ensemble; its place in the middle of the ensemble lets it play multiple types of parts. It’s not restricted to the bass part and low melodies like some of the low brass generally is and it isn’t restricted to the higher melodies of the flutes. It falls in line often with the French horn, which coincidentally is one of my other favorite instruments, although I cannot play it. I like the wind band repertoire as well; I enjoy the works of Holst, Grainger, and many of their contemporaries. It’s fun music and band is one of my favorite parts of the day.

So to anyone out there planning on picking an instrument to play, pick saxophone. There may be a plethora of saxophone beginners, but if you choose the path of classical saxophone, there aren’t too many out there, and the music is fun and rewarding.