Sax-Squatch - the Appeal of the Giant Saxophone

By now, many reading this know I am a record collector with close to 2000 recordings on both vinyl and CD.   However, I also play saxophone, and have done so since my junior high school years.   Being both a collector of vintage music and a sax player myself, there are some things over the years I have gotten interested in, and the monster saxophones are one of those.

This is from my high school years many moons ago - I played baritone sax in the school marching band then.

Do any of you remember from about 20 years ago Tim Allen's hit show Home Improvement?  Tim played a character in the show who had his own fictional home improvement show by the name of Tim Taylor, and anyone who watched it would know that the character he played was the original "gearhead."  If he saw a souped-up '60's muscle car, for instance, his reaction to the power of the engine revving was a sound like "Arr-arr-arr!"  We boys like our toys, and although not all of us are "gearheads," there is something about an object of our interest being bigger, more powerful, and exuding immensity - it's a guy thing.  And, what gets me transfixed is seeing the biggest of the big as far as the musical instrument I specialize in.

For the most part, when people think of saxophones they think alto, tenor, and baritone (although with the arrival on the scene of a musack-tooting, long-haired scheisskopf by the name of Kenny G, more people know about the soprano saxophone too - I suppose something good besides the effect of Sominex has to come from Kenny G!).  However, there are a whole range of other saxes besides these, including what used to be the elusive bass sax.  The bass saxophone is about 4 feet tall, and in my own music collection I have recordings of a lot of ensembles that have featured it, mastered by such people as Adrian Rollini, Joe Rushton, and Boyd Raeburn among others.  In this day and age, I have a good familiarity with the bass sax, although I still want one and love its sound.  However, there are bigger creatures in the saxophone Serengeti than the bass, and we'll talk about those now.

The mighty contrabass saxophone, this one manufactured by Orsi in Italy

 

The first of the big boys is a 7-foot behemoth, the contrabass sax.  The contrabass has been around for several decades, although it was rarely seen except maybe in some 1970's recordings of jazz artist Anthony Braxton.  However, in the late 1990's, a company in Italy called Orsi patented a new model of the contrabass, and recordings of it began to pop up all over the place.   One of the groups that featured it at around that time was a small dance band called the Nuclear Whales Saxophone Orchestra, as its leader, Don Stephens, acquired one.  Since then, it has been featured as well by young and talented composer Adam Gilberti in his works The Genesis Concert and Dragon's First Flight, the latter featuring himself and three other well-known contrabass talents - young Blaise Garza, Dr. Jay Easton, and Grant Green.  

 

Performance of Adam Gilberti's Dragon's First Flight from around 2004, with (l to r) Gilberti, Grant Green, Dr. Jay Easton, and Blaise Garza.

 

You will notice from the above picture that although these are four varieties of contrabass (and Green's subcontra - more on that shortly), a couple of them look different than the others.  Reason for that entails a company in Germany, Benedikt Eppelsheim, which in the late 1990's patented a new type of low-register sax called a Tubax, which is smaller, more compact, and easier to manipulate wind to play than the conventional contrabass.  The Tubax comes in two varieties - one is an E-flat contrabass, and the second is the B-flat subcontrabass.  Both are also relatively more economical to purchase than the Orsi conventional contrabass, although they still run a pretty penny.  

 

 

  Eppelsheim Tubaxes - top is the B-flat subcontra, and below is the E-flat contra.

 

 The Tubax has also encouraged the more widespread use of lower-register saxes, and now they are starting to be more readily available.

 

The ultimate saxophone though is an elusive 9-foot monster called the B-flat subcontrabass.   This grandaddy of saxes was not believed to have existed prior to the past 20 years, although there is some 1950's footage of a Steve Allen clip in which it appears one was played - it took 3 guys to play it in that clip.  The clip unfortunately is not easy to find unless you have access to the old "Steve Allen Shows" of the 1950's, but it is perhaps the oldest footage available of a giant sax.  In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the conventional and compact subcontras, and a Brazilian-based company, J'Elle Stainer, finally built both - the compact subcontra was manufactured by them back in 2010, and the conventional subcontra (over 9 feet tall!) was just recently introduced.  Both of them are something to behold, and hearing one of them is even more of an experience!

 

Italian saxophone virtuoso Attilio Berni playing the J'Elle Stainer compact subcontrabass sax

 

The conventional subcontrabass saxophone manufactured by J'Elle Stainer.

 

The conventional subcontra was recently featured with Attilio Berni, an Italian saxophonist.  Berni is a collector of many odd and unusual saxes, and he features many of them on a tour he does called Saxophobia (An American counterpart, Rob Verdi, has undertaken a similar project).  Being able to see this legendary horn in a concert setting is quite an experience, as the thing practically dominates the stage.   Eppelsheim has capitalized on this as well, and now they offer their own versions of both the contrabass and subcontrabass conventionals.  The Eppelsheim models vary in design somewhat from the J'Elle Stainers, but they do produce a crisp sound and I believe are available at a somewhat more affordable price.   

 

The conventional B-flat subcontrabass saxophone manufactured by Benedikt Eppelsheim.

 

If you are looking for recordings of the contra, subcontra, and tubax, here are some recommendations.  Obviously, if you are into more of the vintage big dance band material, the Nuclear Whales Saxophone Orchestra are the best option for that.   The Nuclear Whales are no longer together as a unit, but they do have several CD's as well as a VHS concert still available - their later CD's feature the contrabass.  From more of a jazz perspective, I would suggest Scott Robinson's CD Thinking Big, as it is one of the best recordings of classic jazz as played with the contrabass.  Also, the Attilio Berni and Rob Verdi Saxophobia concerts feature some good music on them, mostly dance band and classic jazz - Berni's is only available from Italy, and you will need to play the DVD's of the concert on a computer, as a conventional DVD player will not play those.  On the classical side of things, Adam Gilberti's Genesis Concert is a definite requisite - Gilberti, a gifted young composer from California, not only features the contrabass sax and both Tubaxes in his compositions, but also a host of other unique instrumentation - octobass flutes, etc.  Finally, if you want vintage, the person to look for is Anthony Braxton, who in the 1960's and 1970's recorded several avante garde jazz LP's featuring the contrabass saxophone.   Also, Sigurd Rascher deserves mention - his recordings date back to the 1950's, and he was a pioneer of the saxophone and an early contemporary of its inventor, Adolph Sax.  Rascher's works for saxophone are some of the first concert music recorded for the instrument, and he also was an early advocate of the contrabass, as you will hear it on his orchestra and ensemble recordings.  

 

In short, the contrabass and subcontrabass saxophones are some interesting territory to explore, and I am sure that if you are not familiar, it will be an interesting experience for you.   Take care until next time.