The All-New Bunrab

Saturday was the Navy Band Saxophone Symposium, down at George Mason U in Fairfax. (Well, it started Friday evening, but we had those symphony tickets. Incidentally, the Baltimore Sun's reviewer pretty much agreed straight down the line with my opinions on that concert.) So down we headed to Fairfax, halfway around the nest of evil that is the DC Beltway.

Community saxophone choir rehearsal: the usual bunch of high school kids who think they're hot sh!t, attacking all notes and blithely disregarding all accidentals. But some fun stuff to play, several arrangements by the guy who was conducting the session, Rob Holmes, who plays bari sax, amongst other things, in the Navy Commodores, the jazz band. Since the saxophone is the saxophone, the whole symposium is tilted more toward jazz than toward classical/concert band.

Vendors' room: not enough vendors. But I did grab a moment to speak to the guys from L&L about test-driving some soprano saxes on Wednesday afternoon. The Baltimore SB is doing de Meij's "Lord of the Rings" this spring, and the soprano sax solo is mine if I can do it.

Interservice Saxophone Ensemble: great group, great stuff. A bass sax player, who is also an arranger; they did one of his arrangments which was called "Nick at Night" and was a medley of every corny sixties cartoon and comedy show that's now in eternal syndication. Of course he wrote some great bass sax lines into it!

Whine: next recital we wanted to attend was the Marine Band Sax Quartet; two faults with that: (1) It was in another building, way uphill from the main building, and (2) they played Albright's "Fantasy Etudes." Is there some rule that says someone has to play the Fantasy Etudes every year? I didn't like that piece 10 years ago, I didn't like it last year, and I still don't like it. It consists mainly of "sound effects" rather than music, and just because something can be done on a saxophone doesn't mean it should be done. (Words to live by for many disciplines, including HTML.) Anyway, that said, they certainly did it very well.

The next thing we wanted to go to was cancelled, so it was over to the Thai restaurant across the street for a snack. We seem to wind up there every time we're in Fairfax.

The Community Sax Choir performed in the lobby before the big Commodores concert. It went OK, for something that had had 25 minutes prior rehearsal, had several people who weren't at rehearsal show up and sight read, and about half the people who had been at rehearsal didn't show up. We had fun, anyway, and the audience applauded.

The Commodores concert was fantastic. The guest soloist was Chris Potter, who has an awful lot of awfully good notes stuffed in that horn! He plays tenor sax. My favorite was his composition "Ruminations." He was dressed in "musician casual" which means "whatever you were hanging out in, with a sports coat thrown over it," in this case an untucked shirt, worn jeans, and scuffed boots. I suppose someone that good gets to wear whatever he wants. I really admired the way he could change the tone without changing mouthpieces or even reeds. Plus, did I mention, a whole lotta notes?

A good time was had by all, and we stopped at the Silver Diner for pot pie on the way home. Sunday, we go right back down there for an entirely separate Marine Band concert, and then we're stopping by my brother G's house which is not too far off our route home.

ETA ( pictures of the community saxophone choir )