We all know the feeling that comes when the lights are turned off right before a performance begins. “I’m excited…I love music,” a woman sitting behind me exclaimed.
We were there to see The Alliage Quintet, an ensemble made up of five saxophonists and one pianist. Prior to the event, I had never considered the combination of those instruments; I was not disappointed.
The ensemble performed their first two pieces with no introduction, starting to play shortly after entering the stage. As a saxophonist myself, I noticed and appreciated the simultaneous breaths the players took whenever they could. With the fast tempos that often characterize classical music, those rapid opportunities to inhale were paramount.
After the first two songs, the soprano saxophonist approached the microphone. He explained that when the saxophone was created by Adolphe Sax in 1846, jazz was not even a thing. So, although we might associate the saxophone with the jazz genre, saxophones originally played classical music.
Classical music can notoriously be quite long. At least once during each song, the players stopped playing without retreating their mouths from their mouthpieces. This signified an ending of a movement, but not the piece. The first couple of times the audience responded with hesitant applause, which made the people on stage smile before beginning to play again.
On several occasions, the performers elicited laughter from the audience. The first time this happened was near the beginning of the suite from “West Side Story” when they snapped in unison. It was quite unexpected, especially since, up to that point, only the soprano saxophonist had produced noise outside of the sound from their instruments. Later, they yelled out “Mambo!” while playing “Mambo” from “West Side Story.”
The performance was comprised of so many special moments, like when people swayed their heads back and forth. Someone whispered between pieces, “they’re really good!” Most of all, it was clear how much fun the performers were having. They moved with their instruments, as if the instruments were just a medium to which they were expressing themselves.
When the soprano and alto saxophones had a duet, the other two stood back in admiration, smiling at their favorite sections or shaking their heads in disbelief.
In a time with so many polarizing views, it was wonderful to be in a room that everyone had come to for one reason: to leave the Jorgenson feeling something much more than a melody.
More information on upcoming performances at the Jorgensen Center can be found online at jorgensen.uconn.edu.