ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 16, 1996 TAG: 9603180027
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: RADFORD
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
Don't try any sax jokes on Denise Dabney. She's heard 'em all.
What do you call 50 saxophones at the bottom of the ocean?
A good start.
What's the difference between a power mower and a saxophone?
At least you can get the power mower tuned.
Dabney's got those and more in a computer file of sax jokes and sax quotations she's collected over the years.
Dabney, who teaches music at Radford University and whose saxophone quartet Resounding Winds will play Thursday night at Radford's Preston Hall, concedes that "many people consider the words 'classical saxophone' to be an oxymoron, even today."
The key to banishing that oxymoron, Dabney believes, is sax education.
Which is why Resounding Winds will give concerts in local public schools as well as a saxophone master class Wednesday in Powell Hall at Radford University.
"This may be a biased opinion, but I think [the saxophone] is one of the most versatile instruments we have. It has the ability to sound harsh and crass and all those cliches you hear, but it also has the ability to sound wonderfully beautiful, to play the most pianissimo sound you've ever heard, and to have a wonderful singing quality," Dabney said.
Resounding Winds have been together for seven years. They met while all four were students at the University of Michigan; now they're spread out across two states. Soprano sax player Eric Wilson lives and teaches in Abilene, Texas. Alto player Helen Martell lives in Chesapeake, where she teaches music students in the public schools. Tenor specialist Harry Hassell lives in San Antonio, Texas, and teaches at several colleges. Dabney anchors the group with the low-voiced baritone sax, which is physically the largest instrument in the quartet.
The saxophone has been a major voice in jazz music from the beginning. But in the snootier world of classical music, it tends to be a musical Rodney Dangerfield, an instrument that gets no respect.
"And the reason I think goes back to where the instrument was first popular in this country. It was the jazz dance halls. There was just a certain lifestyle associated with the saxophone that has hurt the instrument in its respectability," Dabney said..
It also didn't help that the instrument's inventor, a Belgian instrument builder named Adolphe Sax, was a cranky man who couldn't seem to get along with anybody. "Sax's life paralleled the life of his instrument in terms of getting credibility and respect. He was not a well-liked man, and he was involved in a lot of lawsuits and legal battles against other people."
But Sax's original idea in 1841 was a stroke of genius, Dabney said. "He had the idea for a hybrid instrument. What he was looking for was a crossover between the brass family and the woodwind family, and those are pretty much the sounds you hear when the sax plays. The instrument is made of brass, but it's played with a reed-and-mouthpiece combination, which is similar to the woodwind family."
The big exception to the saxophone's rocky acceptance in the classical world is France, where French composers seemed to take to the instrument's sound immediately. French composers wrote many pieces for saxophone quartet, as well as sonatas and other chamber music combinations, and they included the saxophone in orchestral pieces.
If you want to hear what a saxophone sounds like in the context of a full symphony orchestra, Dabney recommends Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" in Maurice Ravel's movement titled "The Old Castle." Ravel also gave the instrument a good part in his "Bolero," as did fellow Frenchman Darius Milhaud in "La Creation du Monde." English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams had the sax represent Satan in his masque "Job" (there's that image problem again).
Saxophone players, said Dabney, need more original repertoire. Much of what classical saxophonists perform is a transcription of works written for other instruments. The musician says she frequently buttonholes composers and asks that they write for her instrument. "Every day of our lives, we are befriending composers and trying to educate people about the instrument. Classical saxophonists are struggling for new music, we're pioneering new works."
Resounding Winds come to Radford just at the moment when their new CD has been released. The CD contains some of the music the group will perform Thursday night. On the program, titled "The American Saxophone: Reflections of Diversity," will be arrangements of a Haydn string quartet and a Bach organ fugue, French music for saxophone quartet, jazz and ragtime, and the world premiere of a new work for quartet.
Resounding Winds will perform Thursday at 8 p.m. in Radford University's Preston Auditorium. Admission is $3 for adults and $1 for children. Children under 12 will be admitted free with an adult admission.
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON/Staff. Denise Dabney teaches music atby CNBRadford University and is anchor of the saxophone quartet Resounding
Winds. color.