Some Things Are Better Left To Saxophones

"The fact is, June Akers Seese refuses to lie. When her eye lights on something, she arrests it with a photographic infallibility that is simply breathtaking. She writes Hemingway's best declarative sentence through the lens of Kafka and the searing elegance of Joan Didion. Yet, on top of everything, she manages to be very, very funny-often excruciatingly so. Some Things Are Better Left to Saxophones, her latest novel, embodies vintage Seese and her all-too-human, all-too-like-us, unforgiving domestic landscape: inside our houses, insides our heads, inside our hearts." -Joseph Bathanti, Professor of Creative Writing and Co-Director of the Visiting Writers Series at Appalachian State University In this novel, June Akers Seese writes of two retired Detroit teachers and their retarded daughter, Melody, who lives with them and works at a downtown hotel folding napkins and polishing tabletops. Melody's sisters and brother have moved on. One sister to Japan to study languages and literature; another to a boarding house on the Wayne State University campus where she collects Master's degrees that go nowhere and earns her living as a sometimes waitress. Their brother has fled to Alaska where land is cheap and his carpentry skills valued. All approaching 40, these offspring have no plans to marry or return home. They are all trapped in a dream of escaping the responsibility of Melody when their parents die.

Body & Soul, a song with music by Johnny Green and lyrics by Frank Eyton, Edward Heyman, and Robert Sour, was first published in 1930. It became a popular tune for jazz musicians. This volume presents transcriptions and analyses of recorded solos by Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, Michael Brecker, and Chris Potter. With a foreword by Chris Potter.

A trusted training method for aspiring and serious players, "The Saxophone Bible" covers tuning, tone production, fingering, breath control, playing low and high ranges, scales, intervals, and much more.

The Science and Art of Saxophone Teaching will become a standard resource for saxophone teachers the world over. Perhaps no other book has brought so many practical ideas and approaches for the saxophonist and the pedagogue under one cover. This book can be equally valuable for the serious intermediate to advanced saxophone student. The video demonstrations that are paired with the book will be invaluable to all saxophonists.

Who knew grade six music could be so scary? For kids who love The Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Dork Diaries comes a hilarious new entry into funny middle-grade novels. Jay Roberts loves hockey. He's good at it. He also loves his hockey hero, Bobby Orr, considered a legend by Jay's grandfather. In fact, even though they may bicker, when it comes to the Bruins, the whole family agrees that they are the team to root for. When it comes to hockey, Jay's a team player, but there's one person who seems determined to make life hard for Jay: his classmate and fellow team member, Mick Bartlet. It's a good thing Jay can usually stickhandle his way out of his bullying. But something else is determined to make Jay's life difficult, something far harder for Jay to play: the saxophone. Sixth grade just became a whole lot more challenging ...

In the first fully comprehensive study of one of the world's most iconic musical instruments, Stephen Cottrell examines the saxophone's various social, historical, and cultural trajectories, and illustrates how and why this instrument, with its idiosyncratic shape and sound, became important for so many different music-makers around the world.After considering what led inventor Adolphe Sax to develop this new musical wind instrument, Cottrell explores changes in saxophone design since the 1840s before examining the instrument's role in a variety of contexts: in the military bands that contributed so much to the saxophone's global dissemination during the nineteenth century; as part of the rapid expansion of American popular music around the turn of the twentieth century; in classical and contemporary art music; in world and popular music; and, of course, in jazz, a musical style with which the saxophone has become closely identified.

This book presents a novel method of grafting musical wind instruments by exchanging an instrument’s standard mouthpiece with different tone generators. Using the concrete example of the soprano saxophone, it describes how, with six other tone generators, including brass, double reed, and free reed mechanisms, the saxophone can be extended to nearly every wind instrument category in the von Hornbostel and Sachs classification system. The book demonstrates how it is possible to play these instrument variations with high proficiency, and describes the method of hyper-specialization, including acoustical insights, conservatory training methods and the underlying philosophy. The latter is based on the cultural traditions of the different wind instrument prototypes and the Deep Listening philosophy of cultivating internal diversity, and approach that leads to a new level of wind instrument virtuosity that offers great timbral variety combined with the flexibility of a regular acoustic wind instrument.