Create
The joy of sax: Coltrane meets The Florida Orchestra
Ubiquitous in jazz, the saxophone is also a valued tool of the musical trade plied by classical players. The twain meet, somewhere in the middle, at Sunday’s Florida Orchestra concert at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater.
Second on the bill to Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet is a piece by French composer Guillaume Connesson, a concerto for saxophone and orchestra titled A Kind of Trane.
“A Kind of Trane,” said Robert Young, the saxophonist who’ll guest with TFO, “is sort of an homage to John Coltrane. But I wouldn’t say that it’s a jazz piece.
“The composer was taken by Coltrane’s album A Love Supreme. Essentially, that was the genesis of the piece, but there’s no direct quotes or anything like that. The link to John Coltrane is just his virtuosity as a saxophonist and his ability to weave in and out of different subdivisions of the beat, and his mastery of time.”
Coltrane (1926-67) was a pioneering figure in the development and expansion of hard bop and free jazz. He is considered one of the most creative and influential sax players of the 20th century.
Young, a professor of music at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, frequently subs with Prism Quartet, one of the best-known saxophone ensembles in the world. He is on Prism’s Grammy-winning album Gavin Bryars: The Fifth Century.
His brother Joseph Young is guest-conducting Sunday’s concert. “We played it together last season with the Berkley Symphony out in California,” Young explained. “He loves the piece. So this invitation came through him, which I was very delighted and pleased for. I love collaborating with him – we have a lot of fun onstage of course; that bond between two brothers.”
Reviewing his performance of the Connesson piece, San Francisco Classical Voice called Young’s playing “uncommonly expressive … and technically prodigious.”
A Kind of Trane consists of three movements; for the first and third, Young will play soprano sax. The second movement calls for an alto.
“Some of it actually sounds improvised, a la John Coltrane, but all of it is written out,” he said.
Improvisation is a hallmark of jazz – Coltrane was a master – but it’s not something that symphony orchestras do routinely. Even with a shining soloist out in front.
“Saxophonists,” Young said, “are essentially the emblem of jazz, right? But the inventor of the saxophone, Adolphe Sax, actually invented it to be played in the orchestras and the military bands. But we all know the popularity of jazz, and the saxophone kind of became the poster child for that.”
After he finishes out the academic year in Winston-Salem, Young will start his new position as Assistant Professor of Saxophone at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
“I started in the classical band program in the 6th grade,” Young reflected. “There’s repertoire written for the classical saxophone, there’s many concerti written for the classical saxophone. When you think classical music you think violin, cello, piano. I find the saxophone to be a beautiful instrument on the classical side as well.”
The program also includes John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine. Tickets for Sunday’s 7:30 p.m. concert are available at this link.
