I don’t think any appreciation of David Sanborn’s career is complete without an acknowledgment that one of the world’s best-known and most commercially successful alto saxophonists had an adventurous, avant-garde heart. Here’s a recording from a project that shows a side of him that few people are aware of, but important in fully understanding this highly influential artist.
For all the lazy takes that lump in Sanborn with the likes of Kenny G, Boney James and Dave Koz, his collaboration with Tim Berne on Diminutive Mysteries (Mostly Hemphill) is my middle-fingered response. It’s doubtful that Sanborn himself took on participating in this project with the idea of thumbing his nose at his critics who view him as strictly a smooth jazz musician. More likely, he just wanted to revisit some of his roots.
Sanborn grew up in the St. Louis area in the ’50s and ’60s. There, as an aspiring teenaged saxophonist, he came in contact with the St. Louis free jazz movement and met many of the leading figures of that movement, such as Oliver Lake, Lester Bowie and Julius Hemphill. Sanborn ended up studying with Hemphill and Roscoe Mitchell, before either made their fame as major figures of the St. Louis and Chicago free jazz movements that sprang up in the ’60s and ’70s.
Tim Berne’s association with Hemphill came later but is much better known, having studied under and worked extensively with the influential alto saxophonist and composer in the ’70s. Arguably the standard-bearer of Hemphill’s legacy, no one better understands Hemphill’s style and genius, and Berne’s own celebrated, unique style sprang forth from it.
Sanborn knew, respected and admired that about Berne, and in one of those “it’s a shame they don’t do that on television anymore” moments, he had the fellow Hemphill pupil on his Night Music show around 1990 to play one of Berne’s numbers, in which Sanborn participated.
Fast forward a couple of years later about the time Sanborn’s then-latest album Upfront was enjoying a five-week run at the top of Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz chart. Berne invited Sanborn to participate in an album Berne was making performing compositions submitted by Hemphill. That album became Berne’s Diminutive Mysteries (Mostly Hemphill), released in 1993. Since both were primarily alto saxophonists, Berne sometimes switched over to baritone and Sanborn often played the minuscule sopranino saxophone in place of the alto.
Joining Berne and Sanborn were some of the best New York City’s downtown scene had to offer: Herb Robertson (trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn), Joey Baron (drums), Mark Dresser (bass), Hank Roberts (cello) and Marc Ducret (guitar). Most of those guys played in the Night Music performance.
Keep in mind that Hemphill did not hand over complete charts for the musicians to follow; they were, in Julius’ own words, “skeletal compositions I submitted (that were) fleshed out in a brilliant and creative fashion.” In other words, everybody – Sanborn included – had to listen closely to the other musicians and fill in the holes on the fly in an inventive way that lined up with Hemphill’s vision.
Sanborn’s chops were never going to be in question, even where the music goes dissonant and free, but he also held up very well in those moments where some quick decisions had to be made – as with the calypso-tinged freakout “The Unknown” and the absolute shredder “Rites.” “Sounds In the Fog” leads the whole thing off with a well-defined, swinging theme surrounded by the spooling up and unwinding of ideas created on the run.
David Sanborn is but one of band members standing out (honestly, Baron is the hero on this song), but there’s a part where the song settles into a bop state and Sanborn is summoning Sonny Stitt but over advanced chord progressions as he bridges the decades between progressive jazz of the ’40s and progressive jazz of the ’90s. All while being completely himself.
David Sanborn would go on to make occasional forays out his comfort zone, but he never stepped as far outside as he did here. Like Tim Berne, he learned well from Julius Hemphill.
You can pick up Diminutive Mysteries (Mostly Hemphill) from Screwgun Records. And you should.
*** David Sanborn CD’s on Amazon ***
- Peter Van Huffel, Meinrad Kneer + Yorgos Dimitraidis – ‘Synomilies’ (2024) - December 20, 2024
- Emily Remler – ‘Cookin’ At The Queens, Live In Las Vegas 1984 & 1988′ (2024) - December 9, 2024
- Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin – ‘SPIN’ (2024) - December 8, 2024
