by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•A postponement from Tuesday Musical
•Three saxophone stories: an iconic player who has passed away, a young musician in the avant-garde jazz scene, and a Michigan basketball player
•Almanac: Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel
TMA POSTPONEMENT:
Tuesday Musical has announced that the Soweto Gospel Choir concert, scheduled for October 2, has been postponed until later this fall due to unexpected travel issues in South Africa. Tickets purchased for the original date will be automatically valid for the new date — to be announced soon — and refunds will be offered to those who cannot attend.
THREE SAX STORIES:
One of the important stories in music during recent days is the passing of saxophonist and composer Pharoah Sanders (above) on September 24 in Los Angeles at the age of 81.
Writers tasked with writing Sanders’ obituary have all found their own way to describe the unique combination of qualities that make up his music. Some of the most common adjectives: “visceral,” “bold,” “piercing,” “spiritual.” But each article I’ve encountered has also spent significant time in metaphorical territory — and if you listen to some of Sanders’ music, including his particularly famous “The Creator Has a Master Plan” from the 1969 album Karma, you’ll realize why.
Here’s one great example of that type of description — not from an obituary, but from an article that Marcus J. Moore wrote for The Nation last year, reviewing Sanders’ last album, Promises.
…Sanders, along with saxophonists John Coltrane and [Cleveland-born] Albert Ayler, helped pioneer a frenetic blend of spiritual jazz that, through shrieking horns and loose rhythmic structure, was meant to summon higher powers. The idea, it seemed, was to blow the sax so hard that the music reached God’s ears.
After reading the pieces on Pharoah Sanders, I came across a New York Times profile of 22-year-old saxophonist and composer Zoh Amba (above). “A ubiquitous presence on New York’s avant-garde jazz scene,” according to the article by Hank Shteamer, Amba’s idols include one Albert Ayler. In fact, the profile touches on her discovery of Ayler on the web, when she “immediately identified not just with his music but also with the resistance he faced in his own home.”
For a taste of her music, click here for a YouTube video of the Zoh Amba Trio (herself, bassist William Parker, and drummer Francisco Mela) performing in Brooklyn last fall — just as she discovered a musician who changed her life, perhaps you might discover one too?
After coming across the articles on Sanders and Amba, one thing was clear: the saxophone was destined to receive its own section in today’s Diary. But what news item could bring us to that magic number of 3?
And so I Googled that very normal phrase that we all Google from time to time — “saxophone news” — and found something unexpected: an article from Maize and Brew, a publication devoted to University of Michigan athletics. It was about UM freshman Tarris Reed Jr., who plays basketball for the “maize and blue” and has also played the bari sax throughout his life.
His instrument collection recently expanded. As part of an NIL deal (a kind of contract that allows student-athletes to receive compensation for their “Name, Image, and Likeness”), a music store in Livonia, Michigan presented Reed with an alto sax, an instrument he hadn’t played since middle school.
“Honestly, it’s a huge opportunity and blessing,” Reed Jr. said. “It’s really a different experience playing alto; I get to expand my range with the saxophone.”
Above: Reed Jr. with his family, the store’s owner, and the owner’s wife.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Today we zero in on Hänsel und Gretel, the most famous opera by German composer Engelbert Humperdinck, who died on this date in 1921. The work has a humble backstory: it originated as four songs accompanying a puppet show put on by the composer’s nieces. It then expanded to a Singspiel with sixteen songs, and later to an opera. Stylistically, it’s notable for synthesizing two distinct sides of German music: one part Wagnerian influence, one part German folk songs.
YouTube contains several performances of the entire work, and many also of the famous and beautiful Abendsegen (“Evening Benediction”). Here’s a particularly lovely rendition of that excerpt, sung by Anna Lucia Richter and Fiona Lang, accompanied by a string quartet from the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne in an arrangement by Martin Richter.
Many performances of Hansel and Gretel have taken place locally over the past decade — Oberlin, Nightingale Opera Theater, Baldwin Wallace. Head to our homepage and type the opera’s title into the search bar to peruse at your leisure.