by Tyler Schmitz
On Sunday Standards, I like to dedicate a feature to a different saxophone player each week. Being a sax player myself, I know what to look for when I’m in a specific mood. This week’s feature was on Scott Robinson, a player I could only best describe in one word as “eccentric.” Not necessarily in the “how,” but more so in the “what” he did.
Robinson is an enthusiast of peculiar and novel instruments, and I made sure it was on full display in my selections. He makes himself known by being one of the few contrabass saxophone players, and one of only about two dozen owners, in the world. I knew going in this was the most imperative set piece to display, the golden goose of the show.
Looking through his discography, I found the perfect piece nestled in the album Thinking Big from 1997, aptly titled “Basso Profundo,” a bit of music terminology (with naturally Italian roots) which is the lowest bass voice type. I’m glad the tune is just an extended solo with rudimentary backgrounds (guitar strumming chords, drummer only keeping time, etc.), because it’d be distracting from what I would consider the selling point of the entire album. After all, the album art is just a photo with Robinson’s head peeking out from behind the contrabass saxophone that’s currently dwarfing him and taking up 70% of the cover’s real estate.
However, that’s not all there is to Robinson, as on that same album, he brought along eleven instruments for fourteen tunes, with notable wild cards being the bass saxophone (one voice below baritone) on tracks 7, 8, 9, and 11, a C-melody sax on tracks 4 and 10, and as well as the theremin on tracks 2 and 12. I actually plan to add some more songs from this album to Sunday Standards due to all the unique sounds you’d never hear otherwise.
I also decided to take track 1, “My Heart,” which was only a tenor sax piece, simply because it shows that Robinson was more than just gimmicks. He still has a technical knowledge with the tenor and plays the tune smoothly, and the shapes he puts on his riffs are solid. He even demonstrates when to put some fuzz on the reed and when to play it clean on his solo.
The last tune I had selected for the show was “Morning Star” off his Tenormore album. It works well as a soft, upbeat, lyrical piece without any sharp edges to it, and it does well to define just how skillful Robinson’s fundamentals are, and is still a nice piece to listen to.
Tune in Sunday for another edition of Sunday Standards and more Scenes from the Saxophone Section.
