Jazz Music for Saxophone

Jazz music for saxophone

Jazz and saxophone are virtually synonyms, since the instrument identifies itself as the musical genre and vice-versa. Although jazz uses several other instruments such as the trumpet, tuba or drum, the sax is the exponential member of the jazz instrument family. Hence you will find it easier to spot sheets of jazz music for the saxophone instead of any of the above mentioned instruments.

As few know, the saxophone was designed primarily to be a marching band and military orchestra instrument by its inventor, Adolphe Sax. Jazz music for saxophone appeared later on, in the 1920s when the instrument was at its popularity peak. Soon after, famous musical schools all over the world adopted the correlation between the genre and Sax’s instrument and started training players in jazz music for saxophone.

Actually, since jazz became such a huge success in America, it also earned the attention of the established European musical schools who put heavy monetary efforts into training jazz-based bands, individuals and orchestras. There was a competition going on at that time and European musical schools had some ground to catch up to the American ones. Thus they formed distinct classes for jazz, oftentimes lead by famous French jazz players or even American ones. There were classes that focused on jazz music for saxophone, soft-jazz, jazz for trumpet and so forth.

This fact balanced out the traditional dispute between American and European music (which is quite an ironic dispute, since American music was heavily influenced by the European one and vice versa). It also evened out the dispute regarding the “color” of jazz. Some extremist musicians of the time labeled jazz as a “solely black” musical genre and stated that jazz music for saxophone cannot be played right by a non-black. Although it’s hardly the case today, given the tensions of the time, it was a rather serious dispute.

Today, jazz music for the saxophone lost its momentum in favor of the new generation of the pop culture, but if you take a tour of some of the important musical schools, you will notice that the classes focusing on jazz saxophone music are always full and willing to light the genre’s flame again.

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