Saxophone and Clarinet Trios

That this music exists is due entirely to my friendships with Randy and Cory. We've known each other and played together a long time, and when we're improvising, both of them can anticipate what I'm about to do before I know myself. One of the oddities of music creation is that the composer/improvisor is the last person to know his own style: I believe that I have free will; I believe that I can play whatever I want; I expect to surprise myself – and yet my friends know better, and they're there to meet me.

The other necessary cause for this recording is an unfortunate accident: I had scheduled a recording session for my String Trios, when the cellist injured her shoulder. Although she had recovered to some degree by the time of the recording session, I reserved two days, knowing that playing more than a couple hours would be hard on her. Originally, I intended to use the time that they weren't playing to record solos of my own, but as the time approached, I realized I wouldn't need so many hours. I decided to call Randy and Cory to do trio improvisations. And then, as the date was almost upon us, I realized that I had several unrecorded trios for clarinets and saxophones, so I brought them along. We had limited time in the studio, so most of the compositions were recorded in one or two takes, with no time for practice. (I suppose I could have sent out the music in advance – maybe doing the compositions was a very, very last minute decision? I forget, but it wouldn't be unlike me to not have thought ahead. I'd performed a couple concerts in months previous, one with Cory, and one with Randy, and in both cases they'd found themselves sight-reading music on stage. It went pretty well.) So what I'm saying is: these performances aren't perfect. And I wish I could say that I like things to be imperfect. I don't, exactly, but what I do like is to get together to play music with my friends, and upping the ante by making a recording of it seems a reasonable thing to do. That is: the recording you're listening to is secondary, by a long way, to the experience of having done it. It's much more exciting and satisfying to almost pull it off than to rehearse music diligently, only to fall a bit short anyway. And all recordings fall short. I learned from listening to Sun Ra that it doesn't matter as much as you might think, except that you feel a little self-conscious on behalf of the musicians. Which you shouldn't! Randy often talks to me of how fun this recording session was, and a part of me is sad to think that listening to the recording and hearing the imperfections will dull his memory of it. But Randy, I'll say, the memory you had was absolutely accurate: we did the impossible by nearly getting it all right. And by the way, I'm a much less accomplished player than Randy and Cory, so I'm likely responsible for the places where the time lags, or someone hits a note just a hair late. And we had a really good time doing it! A lot of credit is due to John Finkbeiner, who is a thoroughly competent and unflappable engineer.

I don't have anything much more to say about what we're trying to do here musically, stylistically. It's the outgrowth of basic musical principles of counterpoint: you think in terms of playing lines which are parallel, contrary, or oblique in relation to that which you're hearing from the others. I will admit that it's impossible for me when writing for wind trio to not think about some of the ars subtilior music I've briefly examined. And then there's that sense of humor one has – or doesn't. It's a playful music.

The little solo snippets are trimmings from some of the solo improvisations I recorded during these same sessions. It seemed to me that there needed to be something to separate some of the longer tracks from each other.