Category Archives: Saxophone

‘Convocation’ Out Now

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Convocation, the new album by Matt Borghi and myself, is now available. I mentioned it a couple posts back when previewing 2013. The album was officially released digitally on January 31, but we’ve been waiting to really advertise it until we approved and finalized the hard copies.

My collaboration with Matt is five years old this year, and it’s been an ongoing reference on this blog. From our time together in The Elevator Conspiracy to our duo work in a variety of genres under both our own names and Teag & PK, we’ve been fighting the good fight – at least if you ask us for our opinion – for a few years now. A couple of last year’s posts were specifically about us. (See here and here.) Long story short, we cover a lot of musical ground. We started out with lounge-ish and jam-ish rock in The Elevator Conspiracy. Then, as a duo, we first explored acoustic indie-rock territory, but quickly pursued a parallel path of ambient-centric improvisation. We’ve continued down both paths the last couple years, but rarely have we mixed them. As Teag & PK, we perform original songs in coffee houses and on the radio. As Matt Borghi & Michael Teager, we explore sound in art galleries and other “listening space” environments. Convocation is an accidental culmination of the latter, and our first full-length album of either style.

I say accidental because we never intended for this to be an album. At least not originally. After a ~6-8 month spurt with our singer/songwriter material last year, we decided to go ambient at the last minute before a gig. (Matt wrote a great article about that evening here.) That gig’s success reinvigorated our ambient leanings, and so we booked some studio time a couple weeks later at Dan Jaquint‘s The Fort. We entered the studio with no plan other than wanting to capture some our new-found spirit. At best, we hoped to walk away with ~15 minutes of usable material for use as a launching point for an eventual album or project down the road. Because of our low expectations, our “rehearsing” consisted of a couple lunches, phone calls, and emails. Matt sent me about six minutes worth of sketches that he had been messing with, but we hadn’t played together since the aforementioned gig. Horn in hand, I noodled with those sketches for about ten minutes. That was it.

Once we were all set to go in the studio, we told Dan that we just wanted to record some chunks of improvisations. With our levels, etc., set, all he really needed to do was start and stop the recording equipment. For the first attempt, we improvised over a recently-composed loop of Matt’s for about 15-20 minutes. Once finished, we looked at each other with much relief – this was going much better than expected. So over the next ninety minutes we laid down four more chunks: two fully improvised without pre-conceived loops, and two fully improvised over loops that Matt had put together since our last gig. We had surprised ourselves and ended up with possibly more than our hoped-for 15-20 minutes of material.

All five of that evening’s sonic treks make up Convocation. Presented in the order in which they were recorded, all of the source material was recorded live. I say “source material” because Matt did some post-production work with the mix and other audiophile-related items, but, except for cutting out some chunks for brevity’s sake, the musical content wasn’t copied-and-pasted together a la Bitches Brew. Over the next several months we contemplated what to do with the material, finally deciding to release it via Matt’s record label Slo.Blor Media – an excellent source for ambient music and sound art.)

For purists, this album arguably may not be a strictly “ambient” work. While the whole album is grounded in an ambient foundation, the focal point, if there is one, is the improvisational monologues and dialogues. That’s where one may possibly hear jazz-ish influences, though don’t waste your time listening for any bop licks. Each of the five tracks is a collective improvisation over soundscapes, two of which were fully improvised and continually change. No “melodies,” “hooks,” or “beats.” Just sound. It’s somewhere in the nexus of ambient, jazz, sound art, and contemporary classical. (The latter if it were notated, but it wasn’t so it’s not.) Again, neither Matt nor I care what you call it. We haven’t even settled on the nomenclature. This is something we’re very proud of and want to share with open, willing ears. What you call it is a distant second to how you receive it.

Please do check it out if you’re interested. Feel free to drop a line if you dig it. And if you feel so inclined, feel free to leave a review on iTunes or Amazon.

Convocation is now available via iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, and Spotify. And you may order a hard copy via Kunaki. For more info, you can visit:
http://slobormedia.org
http://www.mattborghi.com
http://michaelteager.com

Here’s the official press release from Slo.Bor Media:

Convocation is the work of ambient composer Matt Borghi (www.mattborghi.com) and saxophonist Michael Teager (www.michaelteager.com). Recorded as a series of improvisational structures in spring of 2012, this is the first recording that Borghi and Teager have done together after a half-decade of working together.

With Convocation, Borghi brings in spacious guitar textures to create a harmonic fabric for Teager to lay out his saxophone playing with subtlety and nuance. With a background in classical and jazz saxophone, Teager brings a wide palette of influences to the music. Listeners will hear aspects of Jan Garbarek, John Coltrane and Dave Liebman that’s juxtaposed over Borghi’s pastoral guitar sounds that have more of their timbral origins in the work of Claude Debussy or Ralph Vaughan-Williams than they do other contemporary ambient guitarists.

Convocation, as a whole, aims to create a deep and timbrally interesting listening experience while also bringing together an interesting musical pairing and improvisational process. Saxophone and ambient music have never sounded like this, and Borghi & Teager attribute this to their friendship, their approach to the work and their diverse musical interests.

Buy the hard copy CD here now, or you can visit online retailers such as Amazon, iTunes, or eMusic to name just a few…

Beyond the Horn

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(NOTE: I’m aware that some sweeping generalizations are made here. I intend to deeply sift through this further down the road.)

I play many different styles of music. Regular readers may already know this but, for example, in the last six months I’ve gigged in the following styles: Americana, folk/singer-songwriter, cocktail/wallpaper jazz, “jam band” (for lack of better term – improvisatory rock), sound/ambient, musical theater (Annie), rock. And I’m already in the process of lining up further disparate gigs over the next few months. I’m well aware that I’m not unique for doing so. A number of my colleagues and peers do the same, and there are many musicians in general that do so. However, one supposedly “limiting” factor is that I’m doing all of these gigs on saxophone (tenor, soprano, alto; plus the occasional flute and/or clarinet).

The jazz-, musical theater-, and classical-oriented stuff is no big thing in the sense that there’s already a place for me. In the latter two cases, the music is precisely notated in such a way that there should be no deviation from one performance to the next. In jazz, the history and vocabulary provides a natural context for the horn regardless of who I’m playing with. However, many of the other styles – notably rock, indie, and others of such ilk – aren’t common settings for my instrument. And in those cases where sax is often used, especially in older rhythm and blues and rock and roll styles, it’s performed in such a specific manner that eschewing such conventions – growling, squealing, blues-ing – can be jarring. It’s not that I dislike such affectations – quite the opposite – but over time they created a box that largely remains today.

Over the last four decades, the saxophone has been a sort of cameo rock instrument. (Before then it was often a staple.) When present it is noticeable. It usually seems to be the case that it’s “band + saxophone” as opposed to a band that happens to have a saxophone as a mainstay. There are of course exceptions to this rule – my beloved Dave Matthews Band springs to mind. In the case of DMB, the sax originally substituted the position of lead guitar (trading such responsibilities with violin). Also with DMB, the music has enough jazz-, jam-, or crossover influence to comfortably allow a variety of instruments to fit in. Another band known for marathon concerts, Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, of course features sax (the late Clarence Clemons, now his nephew Jake Clemons and Eddie Manion). However, even with The E Street Band, the heavy guitar presence sort of places the sax within the aforementioned box. (Disclaimer: I’m not intimately familiar with Springsteen’s deep cuts, but these are my impressions having explored his catalogue as much as I have.) Just picking one song off the top of my head, “Rosalita” definitely follows in the “rock sax” tradition. Even Pink Floyd‘s use of the saxophone stayed mainly within this vain – e.g., “Money,” “Us and Them,” and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond Pt. 1” (the latter being perhaps my favorite PF song). There’s even a hint of it in Ron Holloway’s playing with The Warren Haynes Band (last week’s MTH-V). Or you could just listen to some George Thorogood. Or Bob Seger. Or…you get the picture…

It’s worth reiterating that I have nothing against the above sax examples or style at large. For the most part, I quite like all of them. But they passively reinforce the stereotypical “rock sax” sound – a near-anachronistic rhythm and blues punch in the face of the 70s, 80s, 90s, or 2000s listener. It’s as if the saxophone stayed in the fifties and sixties while rock continued to evolve alongside it over the next four decades.

Whenever I play with a rock band – sitting in or regularly – I’m compared, consciously or otherwise, to this tradition. (And I mean a real rock/pop band, not just a funk/fusion band that features an electric guitar.) Though I always appreciate it, I can’t help but laugh a little each time I’m told something to the effect of, “I didn’t know what to expect when I saw the saxophone” or “that was really good [or different, in a positive way]!” Because I know that that comparison took place at some point in the performance, even if only for a few milliseconds. And why shouldn’t it? That old R&B – the real R&B: rhythm and blues – sound is deeply embedded in that aural combination of “band + saxophone.”

By no means do I think I’m going where no saxophonist has gone before by avoiding this hangup. To cite a current example, one of the many things I love about Bon Iver‘s sophomore album is Colin Stetson‘s saxophonic contributions. (“MTH-V” on Bon Iver is here.) He plays throughout the material but is rarely at the sonic forefront – his presence is felt as well as heard. And his choice to mostly play the bass saxophone (with some alto and clarinet thrown in for good measure) is definitely unique in a rock setting. He is effective because he adds another noticeable, functional layer without sonically drawing attention to himself. If you were to just sit down and listen to Bon Iver straight through, you wouldn’t necessarily consider it “band + saxophone” (or “band + French horn,” etc.), but rather just a band.

(There are of course other modern/recent examples – Morphine springs to mind.)

When I’m playing with a band – rock, folk, jazz, or anything remotely along those lines – I don’t necessarily think of myself as the saxophonist per se. Instead I’m just another musician in either a lead or supporting role. Or both. Idealistic? Perhaps. But it has an effect on my thinking and consequently my playing. This of course is part of trying to find one’s “authentic voice,” to quote George Carlin. A primary goal for any musician or artist of any kind is to hone one’s craft to the point of developing an original voice/POV. This shouldn’t exist in a vacuum – ideally I should sound like me regardless of style. As I’ve said many times before, I grew up on rock and pop music. The sound is buried in my DNA. If anything I just see myself as another guitarist without getting hung up on the instrument hanging from my neck.

In Teag & PK, for instance, I have a lot of room to explore. There are just two of us – Matt (guitars, vocals, effects, electronics) and myself (saxes, flute) – and we cover a lot of stylistic ground from experimental ambience to straight-ahead songs. (More on that here and here.) The ambient improvisations are “easier” than the songs in the sense that the sonic landscape is wide open and there’s mostly no form. The more indie-esque songs are challenging at first because it’s often tricky to figure out where and how to implement a monodic instrument without getting in the way of Matt’s chords and voice. We can’t always have countermelodies – that’d get old fast. And I don’t want to just stand there as the de facto soloist in the final act of every song. So instead I find other ways to fit and truly collaborate: subtone a bass line, offer responsorial phrases, play an occasional counter-melody, regularly switch instrumental for timbral effect, etc. In a number of songs I’m able to fill out our sound without distracting from Matt’s singing; it’s truly a duo instead of an alternating singer and soloist.

Regarding straight-ahead rock, I’ve recently been sitting in with The Fencemen. (They’re rock with a capital R-A-W-K.) It started as a one-off recording contribution but I’ve since sat in on a couple live shows. As a bit of an experiment on their part (I’m guessing), they gave me carte blanche on the last gig’s entire set. I did my homework – happily so; their upcoming debut album is great – and did what I thought was best for each song. The band’s instrumentation of vocals, guitar, bass, drums, and keys is already sufficiently full, so above all else I intended to stay out of the band’s way. I gave myself some legitimate “parts” that simply enhanced the texture in some areas, other times I soloed. And other times I simply acted as a second guitarist, complementing the primary guitar parts. At no time did I stress over where to put a saxophone. Instead I thought about where I, not my instrument, would fit. (And if the answer was nowhere I’d lay out.) I didn’t want to just add sound for the sake of adding sound. I wanted to do fit inside what was already there. And it seemed to work. (For the most part, at least.)

Understandably, the above two examples may not seem like much. But I can tell you that, from a horn player’s perspective, the impulse to play a lot of notes is enormous and difficult to temper initially. In classical and jazz ensembles the saxophone often has a busy, featured part. This creates a sort of default mentality of always needing to play similarly in all settings. And on top of wanting to let the fingers fly, a trap I’ve seen a number of people fall into is a stylistic misunderstanding. It’s not uncommon to see a horn player execute jazz licks within pop music. (I guess that whole “knowing your predecessors” thing only applies to jazz and classical styles?) I’m sure part of it may just be the natural defaulting to what he/she knows best. Beyond that, I’m convinced that part of the reasoning is also a mindset that focuses on a traditionally “jazz” or “classical” instrument juxtaposing with a pop style. This then reinforces the reverting to type that often occurs.

I’m not going to allow my choice of instrument limit my choice of style. It’s not that I have “guitar envy.” Obviously I love the saxophone or I wouldn’t have spent all these years devoted to it. In fact, in full disclosure, I’ve played in the aforementioned “rock sax” style a number of times – sometimes that really is the best option. But often it’s definitely not the only option. An instrument is just a means of expression, not an end. And despite all my rage I won’t be just another horn in a cage…

(Photo: Meat Loaf as Eddie in Rocky Horror Picture Show. Duh.)

Gear

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I recently decided I wanted to invest in some new hardware for a couple of my saxophones. There are a couple ligatures and mouthpieces that need to be improved upon if not replaced. On top of that, I’ve recently been experimenting with different tenor reeds. While many  saxophonists would find this sort of thing exciting, I don’t.

I’m not a gearhead. Never have been, and likely never will be. I occasionally like to know what certain saxophonists use only out of intellectual curiosity, but it ends there. I care about my own setup of course, but to a certain extent. All of my saxophones and related hardware are of course professional grade, but I’ve never been one to be on the constant search for the “perfect” mouthpiece, neck, etc. Everything I have was selected after much testing and comparing (e.g., my alto saxophone was the best of 13 I play-tested; mouthpieces, etc. were also similarly chosen). Changes have been made along the way, however I tend to largely work with what I have. And even though I have all Selmer saxophones, that is because those are what I was happiest with when shopping around. The Selmer v. Yamaha (Selmer v. Yamaha v. Yanagisawa v. Keilwerth) debate interests me as much as the Apple v. PC v. Linux debate, which is to say not at all.

For many of my peers and colleagues (past and present), such an investment is just the beginning. I can’t tell you how many other saxophonists I know who have spent years searching for the next perfect mouthpiece, reed, ligature, neck, and even horn. Really? Really. I can understand it to an extent. Instrument technology is continually improving, often allowing for more options and flexibility. However, unlike advancements in computer technology, new models don’t necessarily negate their predecessors. I’m sure that if one took all the time spent thumbing through catalogues and/or vendor websites and spent it practicing tone fundamentals, a relatively similar amount of progress may occur.

Before anyone tells me that I think gear is completely irrelevant, allow me to say that I do think it matters, but only to a degree. I believe that once a certain threshold is met, user error is more to blame than mechanical error. Tone and projection can be affected a myriad of ways by a new/different mouthpiece, and that, coupled with personal taste, means that not everyone will play the same thing. When it comes right down to it, you sound like you. If you’re happy with your sound, great. If not, perhaps its time to look in the mirror as opposed to your instrument case. A few anecdotes that have stuck with me:

• In 2003 I saw James Carter milling around the vendor area at World Saxophone Congress XIII. JC is arguably the best technician of the instrument alive today, and he attended the conference (an almost exclusively classical event) simply to test horns, mouthpieces, etc. Being a big fan, I loitered around the vendor area just to hear him do his thing, free and up close. And no matter what he played, he sounded unmistakably like James Carter. I saw walk by one table and presented with a neck screw by one vendor who claimed it would really free up his sound. (!?!) Carter gave him an ARE YOU HIGH? look, tested a horn with and without the magical screw, and claimed nothing changed.

• In 2006 I saw the Dave Liebman Group at Ann Arbor’s (unfortunately extinct) The Firefly. They played two sets, and during the first set I noticed Lieb was playing on a new Yamaha tenor (either an EX or Z model) which was brought by a regional Yamaha representative to court the guru. For the second set, he switched back to his standard Keilwerth (his partner) tenor and still sounded like Lieb. (I attended the show with my friend Drew Whiting, and we both noticed a slight timbral difference at the very bottom of the horn’s range, but we’re both saxophonists and were visually cued to listen in for a difference.) Although Liebman’s tone has changed over the last four decades, I would hardly attribute it to one or two of the hundreds, if not thousands, of iterations his setup has undergone through the years.)

• Throughout my undergraduate study, I had a classmate who was obsessed with mouthpieces, reeds, and ligatures. Every few months his setup would change slightly. (Occasionally he would say something to the effect of, “James Carter plays on _____ mouthpiece. I’m going to get it.”) All that time and money invested in continuing to basically sound like himself, squeaks and all. JC was nowhere to be found. I’m sure one cause for the long-term occasional chirping was that his muscles and mind were unable to focus on his sound via one specific setup.

That being said, my temporary search for new gear continues. Regardless of how annoying it may be (though it of course is always fun to get a new toy of some sort), I can rest assured that purchasing the next ligature or mouthpiece will mark the end of this search, not the beginning of another.

(Pictured above: My toys.)