Saxocologist and Greenleaf Curating Fellow Jake Goldwasser came to Studio A to play a bunch of really cool (and really old!) saxophones from the Greenleaf Collection at Interlochen Center for the Arts and tell the story of how the saxophone came to be what its known as today!
The saxophone was invented by Adolf Sax in Belgium in 1846, originally to make a sturdier, louder counterpart to the clarinet.
To represent these original saxophones, Jake started off by sharing one of the first 400 saxophones ever made in the United States with us: CG Conn 337.
It's an alto sax, and although it has a few different keys here and there, it still plays like a more modern instrument!
He then shared a member of the saxophone family that is no longer made, but was really popular in the 1920s during the "saxophone craze," when a lot of saxophones were being produced.
It's the C Melody saxophone, and it was super popular because players didn't have to transpose melodies into other keys like they did when playing the Eb Alto or the Bb Tenor saxes.
To represent the 1940s, Jake brought a Buescher "Top Hat and Cane" tenor saxophone.
Fun Fact: the curved neck of the tenor sax was meant to make it sound more like a bassoon!
Jake also brought along a saxophone from his personal collection — a beautiful soprano saxophone!
This one is only about 10 years old, so it's considered a "modern" instrument compared to the rest of the horns heard in today's episode.
The soprano isn't the smallest of the saxophone family, but it's the smallest one that is still played regularly.
Hear jazz clarinetist and soprano saxophonist, Sidney Bechet play the soprano here:
The soprano sax has a straight body, sort of like a clarinet ... but they also made straight alto saxophones!
This one is was made by the Buescher company in 1926!
That's almost 100 years old!
Hear Jake play all of these amazing saxophones in this episode of Classical Sprouts!
Jake also has a YouTube channel "hexachord"where he posts and plays amazing saxophones — he calls these videos "saxocology!"
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Classical Sprouts is produced by Emily Duncan Wilson. This episode was engineered by Kelley DiPasquale.
Instruments played in today's episode are a part of the Greenleaf Collection at Interlochen Center for The Arts.
Learn more about Jake's involvement with the collection as the Greenleaf Curating Fellow here.
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