Polaris Prize contender Colin Stetson has his bass covered

10.07.11

Unless, of progress, you come off to be a learner of advanced saxophone adroitness, and Stetson, as it happens, is exactly that. A saxophone Wunderkind, he mastered the more run-of-the-mill saxophones – alto, theme, soprano and baritone – in his teens, and feigned coincidental standard music at the University of Michigan. There, he developed a charm with the debase end of the sax spectrum, savouring the “heft and physicality” of the instruments, and unmistakable that what he remarkably wanted was a bass sax.

That was easier said than done. Although actually public in the 1920s, bass saxophones these days are agonizing to find and even harder to contribute, with new horns contest upwards of $18,000. “Not that they’re significance it,” says Stetson, who adds that his own horn – a century-old Conn – price him “a fraction of that.”

Then there’s the defiance of playing the detail. Perpetual more than 120 centimetres soaring, the bass saxophone is far more difficult than the baritone."It was word for word, spread my arms as they go, and fascinating in more air than I do," says Stetson. "I had to shed some of the meter, but in reality confusing.

Source: Globe and Mail