Chris Potter, Joshua Redman and Chris Cheek with Dan Forshaw of Cambridge Saxophone
Quite possibly the greatest gig ever for a saxophone player – four of the modern day greats all playing together.
I was delighted to hear Chris Potter, Joshua Redman, Mark Turner and Chris Cheek performing at the Wigmore Hall, London, as part of the Axis Saxophone Quartet. They all played tenor at some point (check out this video from their gig in Moscow playing ‘Tenor Madness’, just as they did in London), but then they also divided duties across the three other main saxophones. Chris Potter and Josh played soprano and alto (Potter is a beast on the alto, even though he doesn’t really play it much any more), Mark stayed mostly on tenor, whilst Chris Cheek kept the low end going on baritone.
Chris Potter told me his alto mouthpiece was an exact copy of Charlie Parker’s Brilhart and had been moulded from the original, now in the possession of Parker’s daughter.
I was thrilled to meet all of the guys backstage afterwards courtesy of Yanagisawa UK, who lent Chris Potter and Joshua a 991 alto and soprano (watch my reviews of these horns here).
Some of their words of wisdom that I wanted to pass on to you:
- ‘Keep working on your sound as much as you can’ – Chris Potter
- ‘What you do outside of your music has as much effect on your music as practice’ – Mark Turner
- ‘Wow, is that the new iPhone?’ – Joshua Redman (seriously, we spent ten minutes chatting about my new phone before we got near any saxophone talk!)
- ‘Don’t just play digital patterns in 4s, work on them in 3s, 5s and even 7s’ – Chris Potter
It was a great thrill to hear all these guys in one place, in a fully acoustic setting. I had a long chat with Josh about bringing the event to Cambridge at some point in 2015/16 – let’s hope we can.
thank you for letting us be a part of this. coooooooooooooooool or what