Northwest Sax Collective – on a snowy March afternoon.

Suzy and I are usually up for new experiences so we thought we’d try the 13/8ths, eight-beat whole notes, and 5 sharps or 6 flats world that is graduate-level classical music. Now truth be known, I had the imitable Paul Woltz on my left side, so I could hardly go wrong right? Ah, it was not to be as I got lost many times and struggled with the behemoth that is my bass sax. Still all in all it was a fun and interesting experience.

Bill Stickney hosted the event in his music studio and I felt a kinship with him immediately as I’ve hosted so many gigs in my own music studio in Redmond. By time all the players showed up, there was one contrabass sax, two bass saxes, two bari saxes, three altos,  and two soprano’s. Besides Paul, there were such sax world luminaries as Jay Easton, Ward Baxter, and Scott Granlund. As polite and quiet as these people were when a sax wasn’t in their mouths, there may have been some more famous people, but I didn’t catch everyone’s name.

   

I didn’t catch the first fellow’s name in the first picture, but that Scott Granlund next to him sporting the silver sop and soul patch. The middle picture is my wife Suzy, a returning after a break sax player named Jason, and another fellow who I don’t recognize. In the last picture above is Ward Baxter and Fran.

 

On the contrabass is Marcel, then me on the Eppelsheim bass and Paul on the Buescher. In the middle picture is Paul, our host Bill, and Jay Easton. At one point we had the too-high guyz with Jay joining them on a curvy sopranino. As we were sight reading and I was getting up every once in a while and trying to catch some goodness to video, here is some excerpts that were interesting.

After two hours we packed up and walked out into near blizzard conditions with cars stalled on hills and visibility reduced to a few feet in front of the car. Fortunately for us, en route to a party, we drove out of the worst of the storm. It was a very interesting experience playing with this group, our first sax choir, and one Suzy and I won’t soon forget.