I have two cafes owners that will feed me if I play, but I only have a bari right now. I will try to figure out ways to get a different horn (that is not expensive)…probably an alto, because I found a store in Taldy Korgan which sells alto Rico reeds. And they are cheap: 100 tenge a reed: less than 1 dollar!
Anyway, here's the whole story:
I then got a phone call from a local café owner that she found a sax and would like me to try it out. I was very surprised by this, because we never talked about this before. Nevertheless, I was curious and went to the café. The good news it was a working sax. The bad news was that it was too much sax: it was a bari.
Anyway, the café owner asked if I would play for a birthday party on Friday. Because I am a Peace Corps volunteer, I wouldn’t accept money, but playing for food suited me just fine (My host mom is the head cook there and she cooks very well). To make a long story shorter, I learned how the bari worked in two days (It has a low A key!), loaded up some backtracks that I kept from Neal, and played at the party. It went as well as it could given the circumstances (bari sax, 2 days practice after 4 months off, etc). Playing the bari sax in a solo manner was like trying to cut a hunk of cheese with a chainsaw, but we (bari and I) survived.
I disinfected the one reed that came with the sax by soaking it in super chlorinated water and cleaned out the rest of it as I was able. (the Peace Corps gives us water purification tablets, in which the main ingredient is cholrine. So I dumped in about 5x’s more than normal. It didn't warp the reed, although my host family thinks I am crazy)
I only played two songs, “The Nearness of You,” with a backtrack and a solo rendition of “Somewhere over the Rainbow”. It went well. Many of the guests (who had never heard a live saxophone) were very impressed and loved it. Lots of kisses on the cheek and handshakes ensued afterwards. The café owner asked me to play on new year’s eve, and I readily accepted, although I do not think that I will play now, mainly because I need a new cable to hook up my computer to the sound board. I do not like doing solo stuff on a bari. Too awkward, and a lot of the tricks I like to do (adderly trill, growling, alternate fingerings, ask Neal about these) sound kind of stupid on a bari.
This is not the end of my musical adventure. While I was at the café, I met the dj there, a man named Daoullete. He invited me over to his house for chai and a jam session, which he called “an experiment”. At first, I thought this was shady, so I asked my host mom if she thought this was creepy. In reality, Daoullete and my host mom are old friends, and his wife came to my birthday party. This is the advantage of working in a small town; networking is very easy. He said that he would call and we would play “later the next day”.
I woke up at 10am to Daoullete yelling my name in the living room. Evidently, he let himself in because the door was unlocked (this is common), and wanted to go now because he just called some friends in the area who happened to have an alto sax.
“Bari saxs are good for groups, but not by yourself.” he said in Russian. “You need an alto or tenor like your picture”. This surprised me, because not only he knew about my picture (I never showed him it), he knew that the bari wasn’t designed as a solo instrument. He then told me to get dressed and hurry because “we have experiments to do.” I went with him, wondering what type of character I was involving myself with and what a crazy musical adventure this is.
What ensued was us driving around Karabulak for an hour, knocking on random doors, (or just walking in) looking for the person with an alto sax. We never found him. We gave up for the time being, and went to his house where we had chai with his kids. Later we had a long jam session, where we used my back tracks.
I neglected to say what instrument Daoullete plays. He plays the guitar. Very well. He knows nothing about jazz, but has a great ear. I taught him a little bit about blues structure and chord changes, and we rocked just fine with the backtracks. Later, he taught me some Kazakh and Russian national songs that are very popular.
After this, we drove back to the café where he talked to the owner and told her to get me an alto or a tenor. I didn’t understand everything that was said, but I understood when he said that the bari was a “crisis”.
The next week he called me again, and said that he found a tenor sax, and if I wanted I could play at a café in Taldy Korgan, which is a small city nearby. I went there, and found that the sax was an old B&S model, made in Germany, and was very old. Don’t know too much about it (maybe Neal knows?) I remark on it only because it had a crazy wide open mouthpiece, so wide that I could only get notes above middle c. I once again disinfected with the chlorinated water, and then played without use of the low register. I thought it was disappointing, but the café owner loved it and said that if I could find a saxophone, I could play there anytime. In return, I would eat and drink all that I wanted (Peace Corps volunteers cannot play for money)
Anyway, that’s the saxophone story.
Happy New Year!
~Kyle
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