Saxophonist Banks’ Chamber Music Recital

Saxophonist Steven Banks (photograph by Chris Lee, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony)

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, the San Francisco Symphony concluded the first season of its new Spotlight Series with a solo recital debut by saxophonist Steven Banks. This was very much a chamber music recital, rather than a jazz gig; and Banks brought an elegant polish to his performances on both alto and tenor saxophones. Nevertheless, the “concert” repertoire for these instruments is decidedly limited, particularly when compared with the jazz repertoire; and all of that polish could not consistently compensate for shortcomings in the music that Banks selected for his program.

The most convincing of the three selections was the opening: Paul Creston’s Opus 19 sonata for alto saxophone and piano. Creston composed this piece in 1939, and it was followed by a saxophone concerto in 1941. Creston is all but forgotten these days; but, during the middle of the twentieth century, he created a repertoire of energetic compositions that stimulated the attentive listener in both symphonic and chamber genres. While he lived until August of 1985, he had begun to fall out of fashion during the turbulent Sixties and occupied himself with his teaching position at Central Washington State College between 1968 and 1975.

Banks clearly enjoyed playing Creston’s music, and that joy was reflected in the accompaniment provided by pianist Xak Bjerken. Whether or not Banks now stands at the vanguard of a movement to revive interest in Creston’s works remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the Opus 19 sonata could not have been a better selection to begin Banks’ recital on a “turf” that was decidedly classical, rather than  jazzy.

Sadly, the remainder of the program had to contend with serious shortcomings. Banks performed his own arrangement of the first, in the key of F minor, of the two Opus 120 sonatas that Johannes Brahms composed for clarinet and piano. His phrasing clearly captured the rich variety of emotional dispositions that permeated Brahms’ score, both in the original version for clarinet and the subsequent arrangement for viola.

Nevertheless, there were significant problems of balance that did not arise in Brahms’ approach to instrumentation. After all, the piano was Brahms’ primary instrument; and he never gave that instrument a “secondary voice” in any of his chamber music undertakings. Sadly, the dynamics of Banks’ saxophone work tended, more often than not, to overwhelm and obscure the many subtleties found on the piano side of this duo. Bjerken clearly tried valiantly to make his voice heard, but he could not compete with Banks’ dynamic range. Thus, while Banks’ arrangement allowed the saxophone to do justice to the music Brahms had conceived for clarinet, the spirit of a chamber music duo was obliterated by the sheer wave of decibels coming out of his instrument.

The program then concluded with Banks’ own composition. Come As Your Are was basically a suite of arrangements of traditional spirituals cast in an overall sonata framework. The spirituals were “My Lord What a Mornin’,” “Wade in the Water,” “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” and “I Still Have Joy.” From a musical point of view, Banks’ balance with Bjerken was far more satisfying. However, there was an underlying sense of abstraction in his approach to arrangement, reflecting, perhaps, the premise that this was music to be sung, rather than arranged for instruments.

Banks also took an encore, which probably would have been more convincing had he said (at least more clearly) what it was and, since it was not familiar to most of the audience, why he chose it.