Giant Strides
My first exposure listening to this guy Derek Brown, saxophonist maximus, was through YouTube, his solo adventures and small ensemble numbers (mostly duets) are great fun. He likes to play in acoustically interesting places which range from creepy but beautifully lit old abandoned houses to grain silos, warehouses, odd echoey chambers, huge wet basements, and well, the fun is seeing it for yourself. Saxophones are powerful instruments, but Derek takes this 1840s era musical machine to places Adolphe Sax probably never before anticipated. The design of a saxophone is for the breath to simply be converted into musical tones, but Derek does all that athletically and then he just laughs, and the two -- man and machine -- become a unit, a thing that has a beat, it has tones, sometimes words, usually legs, several feet, many arms, lots of fingers, up front is brass, the center holds lots of heart, and the amazing valve noises... let's talk about the valve noises. Most saxophone players t...