{ Program Notes
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two piccolos,
two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two
bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three
trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion,
harp and strings.
Saxophone Concerto
John Adams
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, February 15,
1947; now living in Berkeley, California
“My Saxophone Concerto was composed
in early 2013, the first work to follow the
huge, three-hour oratorio, “The Gospel
According to the Other Mary.” Despite
their very different atmospheres and
subject matter, both “Other Mary” and
the Saxophone Concerto share peculiar affinities, particularly in the use of
modal scales and the way they color the
emotional ambience of the music. Both
works are launched by a series of ascending scales that energetically bounce back
and forth among various modal harmonies. This new concerto has as its source
my life-long exposure to the great jazz
saxophonists, from the swing era through
the likes of Coltrane, Eric Dolphy and
Wayne Shorter.
American audiences know the saxophone almost exclusively via its use in
jazz, soul, and pop music. The instances
of the saxophone in the classical repertory
are rare, and the most famous appearances amount to only a handful of solos
in works by Ravel, Milhaud, Prokofiev,
Rachmaninoff, and Bernstein. It is ironic
that an instrument so seldom encountered
in classical music ended up as the transformative vehicle for vernacular music (jazz,
rock, blues and funk) in the 20th century.
Having grown up hearing the sound of
the saxophone virtually every day—my
father had played alto in swing bands
during the 1930’s and our family record
collection was well stocked with albums
by the great jazz masters — I never
considered the saxophone an alien instrument. My 1987 opera Nixon in China is
almost immediately recognizable by its
sax quartet, which gives the orchestration its special timbre. I followed Nixon
with another work, Fearful Symmetries,
16 O v ertur e |
www. bsomusic .org
that also features a sax quartet in an even
more salient role. In 2010, I composed
City Noir, a jazz-inflected symphony that
featured a fiendishly difficult solo part
for alto sax: a trope indebted to the wild
and skittish styles of the great bebop and
post-bop artists such as Charlie Parker,
Lennie Tristano, and Eric Dolphy. Finding a sax soloist who could play in this
style but who was sufficiently trained to
be able to sit in the middle of a modern symphony orchestra was a difficult
assignment. But fortunately I met Tim
McAllister, who is quite likely the reigning master of the classical saxophone —
an artist who while rigorously trained is
also aware of the jazz tradition.
While the concerto is not
meant to sound jazzy
per se, its jazz influences
lie only slightly below
the surface.
When one evening during a dinner
conversation Tim mentioned that during
high school he had been a champion stunt
bicycle rider, I knew that I must compose a concerto for this fearless musician
and risk-taker. His exceptional musical
personality had been the key ingredient
in performances and recordings of City
Noir, and I felt that I’d only begun to
scratch the surface of his capacities with
that work.
A composer writing a violin or piano
concerto can access a gigantic repository
of past models for reference, inspiration,
or even cautionary models. But there
are precious few worthy concertos for
saxophone, and the extant ones did not
especially speak to me. But I knew many
great recordings from the jazz past that
could form a basis for my compositional
thinking, among them Focus, a 1961
album by Stan Getz for tenor sax and an
orchestra of harp and strings arranged by
Eddie Sauter. Although clearly a “studio”
creation, this album featured writing for
the strings that referred to Stravinsky,
Bartók and Ravel. Another album, Charlie
Parker and Strings, from 1950, although
more conventional in format, nonetheless helped to set a scenario in my mind
for way the alto sax could float and soar
above an orchestra. Another album that
I’d known since I was a teenager, New
Bottle Old Wine, with Canonball Adderley
and that greatest of all jazz arrangers Gil
Evans, remained in mind throughout the
composing of the new concerto as a model
to aspire to.
Classical saxophonists are normally
taught a “French” style of producing a
sound with a fast vibrato very much at
odds with the looser, grittier style of a
jazz player. Needless to say, my preference is for the latter “jazz” style playing,
and in the discussions we had during
the creation of the piece, I returned over
and over to the idea of an “American”
sound for Tim to use as his model. Such
a change is no small thing for a virtuoso
schooled in an entirely different style of
playing. It would be like asking a singer
used to singing Bach cantatas to cover a
Billy Holiday song.
While the concerto is not meant to
sound jazzy per se, its jazz influences lie
only slightly below the surface. I make
constant use of the instrument’s vaunted
agility as well as its capacity for a lyrical
utterance that is only a short step away
from the human voice. The form of the
concerto is a familiar one for those who