Introduction Adding one from the steel city

Greetings everyone!

I'm also coming over from SotW (I'm jpeisen over there). My name is John and I live in Pennsylvania. I've played saxophone, off and on, since the 70s. I played alto up until the pandemic when I switched my focus to tenor. I'm currently taking lessons and working on my improvisation skills, and I just recently started attending some jams in the Pittsburgh area.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to meeting everyone and becoming a part of this community.

-J
 
Greetings everyone!

I'm also coming over from SotW (I'm jpeisen over there). My name is John and I live in Pennsylvania. I've played saxophone, off and on, since the 70s. I played alto up until the pandemic when I switched my focus to tenor. I'm currently taking lessons and working on my improvisation skills, and I just recently started attending some jams in the Pittsburgh area.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to meeting everyone and becoming a part of this community.

-J
Great to see another familiar member here. That place went to garbage. Even worse now that they’re selling the members content to AI partner. Bring some more friends if you can. Life is better here on Café.

Awesome you’re attending some jams now. I don’t remember what tenor you have ? Looking forward to your future posts.

Pigs.
 
Welcome, I think FoolishFrankie on YT is from Pittsburgh? He has a lot of gig videos worth checking out.
Yeah, I've watched many of his videos, but I've not been to an event where he was playing. Maybe one day I'll attend one of his video game music performances.

I don’t remember what tenor you have ?
I have two: a King Cleveland, and a Mark VI. The latter is way out of my league, but it's so nice to play.

-J
 
So I learned somewhat recently, actually due to the passing of Franco Harris, oddly, and me surfing around on YT for some little bios of him....that Pittsburgh used to be a MAJOR gig stop for the top-name jazz players back in the heyday...and Franco was heavily involved in the renovating and re-opening of one particular club there.

The town never was particularly associated with Jazz, as far as any national reputation, but I found that really sorta cool.
 
I have two: a King Cleveland, and a Mark VI. The latter is way out of my league, but it's so nice to play
The Mark VI is not out of your league, it’s just the perfect working-person’s saxophone. Well built and rock solid, will last a lifetime. Appropriate for everyone from a janitor to a CEO. Just don’t shop at Roberto’s… unless you ARE a CEO!

Welcome from another SOTWer (that sounds like some kind of disease… I’m not completely cured yet, but time will tell).
 
The Mark VI is not out of your league, it’s just the perfect working-person’s saxophone. Well built and rock solid, will last a lifetime. Appropriate for everyone from a janitor to a CEO. Just don’t shop at Roberto’s… unless you ARE a CEO!
My teacher has said much the same regarding my inferiority complex with playing such a horn.

Well, I did try horns at Roberto's, and one of the "top 3 horns I could afford" (also a Mark VI) was there, but I ended up going with one that I found at JL Woodwind Repair. My budget was a limitation on the Vis I could try at Roberto's though.

Thanks for the welcome!

-J
 
My teacher has said much the same regarding my inferiority complex with playing such a horn.
One, you certainly are no beginner, and even if you were, there is nothing wrong with one playing a pro level horn.

In high school back in the early 1970's, I was blessed to receive a new Yamaha YAS-61 pro alto through a special half-price sale to parents from the newly established Yamaha distributor in Honolulu. (Parents bought the student models and they had a warehouse overstocked with pro models needed clearing for a new shipment arriving.)

Playing a pro model in good repair eliminates any residual horn issues, period. (Fit, ergonomics, intonation, tone, altissimo fingering ease, etc.) Enjoy!
 
I'm not really apologizing for owning the Mark VI. I had my reasons for the splurge, and I'm just glad to be able to own and play it.
Oops! You did it. :w00t: Now you owe us a recording of you playing the Mark VI. >:)😉

(Actually you don't have to unless you want, but it doesn't hurt to put a good foot forward by playing something you know well, perform well, and that others will enjoy hearing.) :mrcool
 
Well, I did try horns at Roberto's, and one of the "top 3 horns I could afford" (also a Mark VI) was there, but I ended up going with one that I found at JL Woodwind Repair. My budget was a limitation on the Vis I could try at Roberto's though.

Roberto's was the first saxophone shop I went into, before I started playing and even before I had any idea of what they cost. I still remember the moment of "they cost THIS much?". 😵
 
The town never was particularly associated with Jazz, as far as any national reputation, but I found that really sorta cool.

There are actually a good number of well-known jazz artists from the area, but they became famous elsewhere..

In a good state of service both are worthy of any player.
Yes, both horns have been overhauled since purchase, so they are definitely in a good state of repair.

I still remember the moment of "they cost THIS much?".
Yeah. My choices were somewhat limited in each of the shops I visited.
 
So I learned somewhat recently, actually due to the passing of Franco Harris, oddly, and me surfing around on YT for some little bios of him....that Pittsburgh used to be a MAJOR gig stop for the top-name jazz players back in the heyday...and Franco was heavily involved in the renovating and re-opening of one particular club there.

The town never was particularly associated with Jazz, as far as any national reputation, but I found that really sorta cool.

(Pardon the digression) There's actually quite a few jazz musicians of the golden age, and since, who came from Pittsburgh. Perhaps the most significant is Billy Strayhorn. On saxophone, both Stanley Turrentine and Leo P (no really) were/are from Pittsburgh. Of course most musicians had to go on the road or to New York for a career.

The jazz music scene of Pittsburgh was probably really hurt by one of those "urban renewal" tragedies - in the late 1950s/early 1960s, the city took the area that was the business/cultural center of the major Black neighborhood (the Hill District) by eminent domain, and demolished it to build a sports and music arena.

I grew up in Pittsburgh (I haven't lived in it for a long time, although I am there right now) and in say the 1970s-80s, people would talk about that as an injustice done, but it was the kind of bad decision that can't be unwound.
 
(Pardon the digression) There's actually quite a few jazz musicians of the golden age, and since, who came from Pittsburgh. Perhaps the most significant is Billy Strayhorn. On saxophone, both Stanley Turrentine and Leo P (no really) were/are from Pittsburgh. Of course most musicians had to go on the road or to New York for a career.

The jazz music scene of Pittsburgh was probably really hurt by one of those "urban renewal" tragedies - in the late 1950s/early 1960s, the city took the area that was the business/cultural center of the major Black neighborhood (the Hill District) by eminent domain, and demolished it to build a sports and music arena.

I grew up in Pittsburgh (I haven't lived in it for a long time, although I am there right now) and in say the 1970s-80s, people would talk about that as an injustice done, but it was the kind of bad decision that can't be unwound.
Really interesting, Thanks. I visited there a few times in the 80's and I really liked the town. Almost went to Carnegie-Mellon...would have been quite happy had I, actually...
I have had a few Pittsburgh natives as friends in my life, liked the heck out of them all. Stanley I got to see twice, live, and both times he mentioned he was a Pittsburgh native, indeed.

That story you mention is a tragedy which repeated itself nationwide in the 60's-70's. Ostensibly under the guise of 'removal of urban blight'... but seen through the sociologist lens, hindsight 20/20...really these were racist public policies attempting to displace minority populations from swaths of real estate which developers could ca-ching on. No real "for the Public Good" about any of these.

Jane Jacobs, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities"...an absolute watershed study/analysis about exactly what was going on there. I recommend it highly, most of what she wrote became in the 80's-today guiding principles of the Livable Cities Movement, and many principles adopted by even the most conventional Urban Planning college programs from the 80's-2000.

This happened in most major cities I can think of - NY, SF, LA, parts of CHI, Philly, Baltimore, some sections of Atlanta, St. Loo, and New Orleans, certainly parts of DC, and in the PacNW, etc. - and even more sadly done during the period of Architectural Modernism, so what replaced those vibrant neighborhoods were often very sterile and lifeless urban landscapes which were antithetical to creating community (and oftentimes ended up being significantly more dangerous areas than what they claimed to be a Rx for; certainly far more lifeless as far as human vitality goes).

The most glaring examples I know of, personally, having lived in both places for decades, would be the Fillmore District in SF, and as a jarring visual example apropos to mentioning on a Sax Forum - look at before-and-after pics of the famous 'boulevard of Jazz" 52nd St in NYC (although a LOT of neighborhoods in NYC were wiped out in similar fashion - this one fell swoop literally took out most of the most storied clubs in NY history, and although folks can argue with merit that NY is STILL THE place for Jazz, there has never since been a strip remotely approaching what that had been).
 

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