Tanya Nehl - Romance (William Grant Still).mov

Tanya performs "Romance", by William Grant Still at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, 2010, accompanied by pianist Zsuzsanna Giczy.

Still was one of the first African-American composers of the 20th Century, and this is a wonderfully constructed melodic piece, which highlights the beautiful tone of the saxophone.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• William Grant Still
• Music
• Saxophone
• Alto Saxophone
• Romance
• instrumental
• accompanied.

[Schoolkidify]

Kudos to Tanya Nehl! Those high notes (D and E) are extremely difficult to play on alto sax. I'm doing this piece for a solo, any advice on how to hit those notes? The highest I can go without sounding bad is a C with an octive (or high C).

[TanyaNehl]

@Schoolkidify The key to getting high notes is having pitch flexibility (and control). So try doing this palm key exercise: play D and overblow until you get a major 6th above it (depending on your level of playing, this might take a while at first). Then do the same thing on each of the high notes, so like this: D, overblown 6th, D#, overblown 6th, E, overblown 6th, etc, all the way up to F# if you like. If you can do this every practice, then eventually they should start to sound better.

[TanyaNehl]

@TanyaNehl Also a common tendency with high notes is to really squeeze up, but this is counterproductive- relax your jaw a bit, and the sound can ring out more. Hopefully this helps. ;)

[symphony18]

Very nice! This is a gorgeous piece, I may just have to arrange it for flute and piano! Your playing is impeccable, gorgeous interpretation.

[TanyaNehl]

@symphony18 Why thankyou! It is simple and sweet, and I'm sure it would work for flute too, if you have a good ear to transpose it. :)

[Schoolkidify]

@TanyaNehl Thanks so much! It does help, a lot! Just out of curiosity, are you Tanya Nehl? Or just a fan..?

[TalkingEnterprises]

I thought that this might make a decent theme for something like a nostalgic or Noir type movie or themed online audio-visual book.

Lots of coffee and late nights behind a word processor might suffice for writers, authors and artisans alike =D

Grant Still most certainly has touched you - I prefer Nina Simone, Glen miller and Violin peices myself.

Still, there are touches of magic here that can only be caught when you know the innermost sanctums of the magic of Brass and Jazz music - GREAT JOB =D