Tenor, C-Mel, & Alto - Me, Myself, & I

Me, Myself, & I - Alto, C-Mel, & Tenor

Tram! - a rare species

Frank "Tram" Trumbauer. A rare creature - a well-known, successful jazz musician whose saxophone of choice was the C-Melody. The joke below sums it up...

"How many C-Melody sax-players can you get into a phonebox?"
"all of them -
comfortably."

Sax Lessons: Volume IV

last Saturday saw lesson number 4. Sophie was depping for someone doing teaching in North Acton, so when she had finished she came over here to Harrow, we had lunch, then embarked upon our lesson.
Again our theme was tone- so Liz had the great joy of watching Chelsea beat Fulham to the glorious saxophoneal accompaniment of;

HOOONNNK
[rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb]
HOOOOONNNNKKK
[rhubarb]
HOOOONNKK
[rhubarb, giggle, rhubarb rhubarb]
HOOOONKKK
etc...

added to the sweet melody of this, was the fact that we spent over 45 mins playing a C, then a similar amount of time playing the C# a semitone above it. Very useful for me - probably not the first choice of musical accompaniment for most people though!
I need to shift up reed-strength again (having hopped up from 1.5 Vandorens to 2 Vandorens) to 2.5. I also need to keep on playing looooo000000OOOOOOOO000000oooooong notes. It'll come along with practise - but I want it NOW. Humph!

Sunday 24th April was London's first ever Mystery Worshipper Sunday (courtesy of Ship of Fools), and although I'm not a Mystery Worshipper, I wanted to be in church, because I thought (as it turned out, correctly) that All Souls would probably be in receipt of a mysterious visitor at one or other of the services - and I wanted to see how a visitor's perspective ties with that of an old-timer. I played the C-Melody (middle in this picture) the two morning services, and in the orchestra service in the evening I doubled alto sax (on the left in this picture) . I love it - it's engaging my brain in the musical-worship experience because I actually have to really think about every note - while on the viola it's occasionally possible to go onto autopilot and not necessarily always be striving to give my best in helping to lead the congregation's singing in worship of the Living God. I don't want to not be doing my best in that context, and it's so nice to have a whole new voice and different kind of enjoyment of doing it too.
We don't know what service the MW came to - and we won't know until the Christian Resources Exhibition opens up in a couple of weeks. That week the collection-counters only met to count the offerings from the plates after the evening service - so it could have been the 9.30, the 11.30 or the 6.30 service (unlikely to have been the 8am Communion service).