Saxology

I would be a terrible music critic.  Like most musicians I have a love-hate relationship with going to concerts.  I either want to be playing or am overly critical and irritable.  I know that listening to live music is really important but if I'm honest a lot of classical music can be a bit dull unless you are actually part of it.



Tonight's Saxology concert was not dull though.  How lucky are we to have such a talented bunch of musicians in our town?  And they have a sense of humour too! They play Bach like it's rock music and Gershwin as though it's the most serious music.  Although, I have seen  the 3 members of the group walk out of the concert leaving one on stage to sulk and improvise until the others decide to join him again several times it always amuses me.  It also takes some confidence to admit that you are not playing one piece on the program because one person forgot to bring the music and to announce that the first piece was The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba and that she was in a bit of a hurry tonight.

Even though it was a brilliant concert I still found that I was easily distracted.  They played a new piece by a living composer who was in the audience.  I spent the whole piece watching the man at the front, who I thought was the aforementioned composer.  I was quite surprised that he seemed to be dozing during his own composition and then at the end the really nice man next to me who had been recording the piece on his phone stood up for the applause.  I assume he was actually the composer.  I also found myself noticing what fantastic legs the soprano sax player had and how beautiful the flower arrangement in the church was.

My favourite part of a concert is often the interval as I like to stand quietly and listen to other people's conversations but there were no funny lines tonight.  Everyone was full of praise. My favourite quote came from my son, who said, "You can never get bored of saxophones"