Author: Sax-Flyer

High school band/sound engineering teacher by day, saxophonist/pianist by night 😎

Update: WYWOP

No music to post this time. It has been uncomfortably long since I’ve released anything, but I have been keeping busy with various other tasks, including planning a trip to Austria for this year’s World Youth Wind Orchestra Project! You can find out more about WYWOP at this link: https://www.mideurope.at/en/members/wywop.

WYWOP is an international group of musicians under 30 that are selected by audition to perform really great literature in a wind ensemble. I have the unique opportunity to play both alto saxophone and piano for this adventure and I’m super excited about it! I have been practicing a lot in preparation for this and my flight leaves tomorrow. That means, unfortunately, there will still be a lack of postings here for at least another 2 weeks.

If you are between 16 and 30 and you’ve played in a symphonic band, I highly recommend trying out for WYWOP. It’s worth noting that this is not a paid event, it’s the opposite. In addition to the cost of the plane ticket, you also have to pay the event organizer to participate in this band, but it is definitely worth it for the experience and friends to be made along the way!

Senior Recital – November 16 2021

I’ve decided to go ahead and release the whole video of my senior recital from back in November! It had been a long time coming and I’m very proud of the end result. By the way, the audio was recorded on UWF’s in-house recording system, which I then synchronized to the video that I took on my camera. Here is the video, and here is the program in order:

Concerto for Alto Saxophone (1979) 0:00 – Ingolf Dahl

Recitative

Passacaglia

Blake Riley, piano

Concertino da Camera (1935) 15:34 – Jacques Ibert ** My memorized performance of this placed 2nd place at UWF’s Concerto Competition in 2021.

Allegro

Larghetto

Animato Molto

Blake Riley, piano

Partita for Flute, BMV 1013 (1723-1724) 28:30 – J.S. Bach
Allemande

Intermission

Bop Duets (1980) 35:50 – Bugs Bower

No. 2

Kameron Horak, alto saxophone

Fifteen Two-Part Inventions (1723, arr. 1969) 38:50 – J.S. Bach

No. 3 Arr. Larry Teal

No. 4

Brittany Comer, alto saxophone

A Tribute to Sax (1994) 43:05 РAlain Cr̩pin

Allegro

Largo

Allegro Vivace

Blake Riley, piano

Encore: Partita II for Violin (from memory) 55:44 – J.S. Bach

Allemande

Klagelied um Vier Stimmen

I composed this saxophone quartet in April 2021 and premiered it at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, where I was a counselor. When I returned to Florida from the summer, I was able to record it at ComposerFest XVI in Pensacola back in September, with the UWF saxophone quartet. Here it is! Hiccups aside, it was a lot of fun to work on something and perform it alongside my peers.

Sax-Flyer – Fly Me to the Moon (feat. Sax FiRe)

Much like last time, “Sax FiRe” and I did a wonderful remote collaboration effort for the holiday season! I decided to do Fly Me to the Moon because it seemed like a good choice. I know it’s not necessarily a holiday-themed song but I feel like I always hear it around the holiday season. If you’re interested in the nerdy stuff behind the production of this song, I basically used ProTools with some Sonivox plugins to create the “backing track”, which I then sent to Sax FiRe who recorded with it in Logic and sent me back the individual tracks. I did some harmonizing and melodic interplay with my own recordings on my sax solo in the 2nd half which turned out nicely. There’s one lick I did under the altissimo B at the end that sounded way better harmonized up a 3rd, so that’s probably my favorite part.

I’m not going to put this one on Spotify so for now I’ll just direct-link the Google Drive file. I haven’t decided whether I’m going to make a music video but if I do I will link it here. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ghpZ37ld9UKpUNVbkoaJCRq70JIg_Mum/view?usp=sharing