A story as much fun to read as listening to a sax master.
The diabolical charm of the saxophone is caught in all its contentious glory by Segell, an editor at the New York Daily News and a newly baptized saxman.
In the mid-1800s, Adolphe Sax , an anarchistic soul living in Belgian with his instrument-maker family, fashioned a new horn. His curvaceous brass instrument had a remarkable versatility, able to mimic an English horn or an oboe or a clarinet, and beautifully express the player’s mood—happiness, sorrow, dread. Segell is under the saxophone’s spell, though he is also a clear-eyed student, both a player and a historian. He squires readers through the early years, when the saxophone took its place in military bands, then through its break-out period as a bulwark of dance bands, swing, blues, funk and, pivotally, jazz. Segell has great fun describing the malleability of the horn, the way each player finds a voice, the rebellious, subversive, Dionysian expression of Parker and Bird, Coltrane and Rollins, Mingus and Young, Jacquet and Mulligan, Getz and Sims and Coleman—characters so renowned you don’t even need to bother with first names. Segell revels in the various styles: bebop’s frenetic rhythmic framework; Paul Desmond wanting to “sound like a dry martini”; Bobby Keyes lending an improvisational vamp to the Rolling Stone’s “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.” There is more—of the physiology of the sax, of crazed collectors, the neoclassical sax and quotes from players that are too good to miss, as when Sonny Rollins says of his playing that he feels almost an observer: “I’m just a conduit. I can’t tell where it’s coming from . . . some kind of definite higher power without trying to get too ecclesiastical about it.”
A story as much fun to read as listening to a sax master.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-374-15938-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2005
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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