Phillip,
Do you play sax as well?
Marcus
On Wednesday, November 6, 2002, at 12:58 AM, Philip Gelb wrote:
> Interesting comments from the great soprano sax player, Steve Lacy.
>
> Kiku Day sent this to me and i thought i would forward it to this list.
>
> In this month's Wire, Steve Lacy is doing the jukebox thing where they
> make people listen to recordings and then they talk about it if they
> can recognize it. At one point Yamagoe, played by Yokoyama (who they
> keep on calling Yokohama) from his CD Zen is played. Steve Lacy says:
> "Well it sounds like Watazumi Doso.
> Close it's Katsuya Yokohama.
> That's his student, his most famous student. Doso was a great master
> for me. I took two lessons from him and studied his music a lot. I
> still have seven or eight LPs of his. They're masterpieces all of
> them. He's one of the greatest improvisors I've ever heard in my life,
> maybe the greatest. He had an amazing life, full of colourful stories,
> like real Zen food. I was lucky enough to meet him, go to his house
> and have a lesson; and then ten years later I had another lesson. they
> were very far out lessons, but they were very important to me.
> Were you playing shakuhachi?
> No, no, just the soprano saxophone. I have a very cheap shakuhachi,
> like Woolworths type of thing. I've had it for 25 years and can hardly
> play it. It's a very difficult instrument. But Doso was an extremely
> important influence on me, and I retain a great admiration for him. He
> was the most modern improvisor I've ever heard in my life. He
> surpassed anybody I could think of, including Braxton, or Derek
> Bailey. Doso, to me, was just....whew, outside all of that, really. Of
> course, he didn't even admit to being a musician. he said, "Music? No,
> it's just practice".
> Your playing has a certain affinity with classic Japanese aesthetics.
> Yeah, Japanese culture is really large for me: Kabuki, Noh, the
> literature, the poetry, the costumes, the painting, the woodblock
> prints, and the food too. This music is really trying to get to the
> heart of it, boiling it down. He (Yokohama) is good. But Doso was
> better. Doso was like...whew, like Charlie Parker compared to all the
> other alto sax players, you know?"
> --
> Philip Gelb
> phil@philipgelb.com
> http://www.philipgelb.com
> ____________________________________________________
>
> <a
> shakuhachi">
>
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