Album Notes

“If you want to hear what a player is really made of, listen to him play a ballad or the BLUES.” That’s the reoccurring mantra amongst older jazz musicians. The blues has often been the benchmark for players--for its uncomplicated chord progression and short song form, which seem to provide insight into the core of one’s musical aesthetic, thus, revealing his or her depth as a musician.

Many artists have released entire albums devoted to this seemingly uncomplicated musical form: Duke Ellington’s "Ellington Indigos,” Coltrane’s "Coltrane Plays the Blues," Wynton Marsalis’ “Majesty of the Blues,” and another example being Hamiett Bluiett’s “Birthright,” a solo baritone saxophone CD on which he recorded solely blues and gospel-inspired pieces. As a soprano saxophonist, I, too, would like to examine my own musical concepts through the blues.

Over the years, I have discovered the blues to have cross-cultural composites that reaches far outside of the backwoods of the bucolic south. There is the pentatonic scale common in Far East and African music; the use of micro-tonality common in Middle Eastern and contemporary classical music—and which can be heard in the original “blues notes” sung by the West African slaves; and the familiar I-IV-V harmonic progression heard in European classical music.


Because of its unique sonic versatility, the soprano saxophone is ideal for exploring these different facets of the blues. Saxophonist Steve Lacy once said: “The soprano has all those other instruments in it…the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet and even tenor elements…It can even sound like baroque trumpet, too.” Besides those European instruments mentioned by Lacy, the soprano can also emulate non-Western instruments: double reed instruments from the Middle East such as the shawm and zurna; bamboo flutes from the East such as the shinobue and bansuri; and when playing multiphonics it can even sound similar to throat-singers from Mongolia. Therefore, making the blues and soprano the perfect union for expressing this type of universal theme.

The fifteen eclectic pieces on this CD, BLUE SOLILOQUY not only explore the many sonic possibilities of the soprano, they also take listeners on a blues-inspired, cross-cultural journey from West Africa to the Far East, from Western Europe to the jazz clubs of New York, then all the way down south to the Mississippi Delta.