Style
Desmond had a light melodic tone when playing the alto saxophone that is similar to the style of Lee Konitz, one of his influences. He was able to achieve particularly high notes, called altissimo, becoming one of the best-known players from the West Coast's "cool school of jazz". Much of the success of the classic Brubeck quartet was due to the juxtaposition of his airy style over Brubeck's sometimes relatively heavy, polytonal piano work. His gift for improvised counterpoint is perhaps most notable on the two albums he recorded with Mulligan ("Mulligan-Desmond Quartet" and "Two of a Mind").
Desmond played a Selmer Super Balanced Action alto saxophone with an M. C. Gregory model 4A-18M mouthpiece — both circa 1951 — with Rico 3 ½ reeds.
Read more about this topic: Paul Desmond
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“It is not in our drawing-rooms that we should look to judge of the intrinsic worth of any style of dress. The street-car is a truer crucible of its inherent value.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“To translate, one must have a style of his own, for otherwise the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one’s own style and creatively adjust this to one’s author.”
—Paul Goodman (1911–1972)