Bolero performed entirely on saxophones

Описание: Selmer artist Pat Posey plays Ravel's Bolero on all saxophones, including:

Sopranino (Selmer MK VI)(x2)
Soprano (Selmer SA-80II)(x5)
Mezzo Soprano (Conn)(x1)
Alto (Selmer SA-80II)(x6)
Alto with Low A extension (Selmer MK VI)(x1)
Tenor (Selmer SA-80II)(x8)
Baritone (Selmer SA-80II)(x4)

Ravel's Bolero is a work that audiences love to hear, and is a perennial favorite for many orchestras. For us orchestral saxophonists this means more work, so we're very thankful for Ravel's including parts for three saxophones in his score. This is one of the first pieces I ever played with an orchestra and it's always been special to me. In these last few months it's one of many works I miss performing with my orchestral colleagues. Left alone through the cyclical days of the early pandemic, in a house with a WAY too many saxophones, I was drawn to this work. I created this video in mid-April, featuring seven different saxophones playing 27 different parts.

Ravel's scoring is brilliant, moving through different instruments in different registers in solos and groups, adding harmonics and harmonizations along the way to create his famous orchestral crescendo. It was great fun to explore the different scorings and imagine how they could be recreated using the different registers of the saxophones in solo and combinations.

Nerd alert:

While the piece is commonly performed by two saxophonists, one playing tenor and one playing soprano each in Bb, it is actually written for two players playing three instruments; one playing tenor and soprano in Bb, and one playing sopranino pitched in F. The first solo is played by the tenor player, and the second solo was started by the other player playing F sopranino until the range gets too low at which point an awkward switch mid-solo to the tenor player (now playing soprano) occurs. About the F sopranino: saxophones were initially conceived by Adolphe Sax as coming in two 'families:' a set alternating Eb and Bb for use in military bands and a set alternating in F and C for use in orchestras. While tenor and soprano instruments built in C were popular in the early 20th century, the Eb/Bb set became the standard, and instruments in C and F are rarely heard today. To my knowledge no sopranino in F was ever made, even as a prototype, and it's thought that Ravel wrote for it thinking that he was simply writing for the highest member of the saxophone family. The split sopranino/soprano part was played at the premiere by the great French saxophonist Marcel Mule entirely on soprano, beginning a performance practice that remains in place to this day. In this performance I play one of the solos on Eb sopranino - ALMOST what Ravel had in mind - and with a bit of Hollywood Magic finish on Bb soprano, making this an almost-faithful rendition of the score in this way.
Though sopraninos in F were never made there was a brief three-year period (1926-28) when Conn made altos in F, marketed as mezzo-sopranos, pitched between the standard Eb alto and Bb soprano saxophones. The saxophone craze was already starting to fizzle, and then the market crashed and they were left with a stockpile of instruments that nobody wanted or could afford to buy. Many were purposefully damaged and given to their repair school to train young technicians on. Nobody knows exactly how many were made or how many survive. Mine was purchased from the collection of Eugene Rousseau and I loved being able to include it as a slight nod to the mythical F sopranino.
Having an alto with an extension to low A (concert C, second space in the bass clef) means the 'A' melody can be played entirely in the lower/fundamental register of that instrument. In one of the choruses I used this as well as mezzo-soprano and soprano, each playing their respective harmonizations in their fundamental registers as well.
There is this one cracked out part where Ravel has the melody played by the horn, then two piccolos playing two (three?) octaves up at the fifth and third to mimic high overtones. There's also a celeste; a colleague who used to play the celeste in one of the orchestras I played with told me that the saxophone solos are his cue to wake up as this chorus is just after the saxophones. I was able to kinda mimic the cracked out piccolo parts using two sopraninos, but my sanity and yours one of them is an octave lower than it should be. My apologies to Ravel, and to the laws of physics on this one.
(this one really for the saxophonists) I spent a week fretting about fingerings for high F# on sopranino, and came up with a ton of wacky finger-crunching combinations of using the high F key to vent WITHOUT having the benefit of a fork key (my neighbors loved this part), before realizing that my nino has a high F# key. Oy vey.