Yesterday was my first experience with Almost Blue jazz blues in Alcester. I nice clean room at the rugby club, it had great accoustics and was, I soon found, an ideal size for such a band – ten and a singer. Apart from Jay who runs the band, a teacher and arranger where needed, playing keyboard and me on clarinet, all other instrumets were saxophones ranging from baritone up to soprano.
There are two things that the soprano and clarinet have in common
– they both play in Bb
– they play almost the same range – the clarinet can play slight lower and higher
So, sharing music this first night was obvious. What might not be so obvious was that we played the trumpet parts as this was the ony music available to us. An interesting ideas, a clari and sop sax duetting as trumpets!
The soprano saxophone is mainly used as a solo and chamber instrument in classical music, though it is also used in a concert band or orchestra.There are many notable soprano payers in jazz bands include 1930s virtuoso Sidney Bechet.
There is a soprano sax player in the TfO Concert Band and we shared music when we went busking at Christmas.
It was clear that Dionne was very good so I was grateful for her strong playing on passages that were a bit of a challenge for me. Nevertheless the music did not scare the way it can do with the Concert Band and I could keep up with most even for this first run through sight reading.