Altissimo for me is a mixture of fingerings and the use of the throat to get the notes i want,but the fingerings are important to get the right run of notes and it is just as important to use the right equipment,like some mpc's are better than others and some prefer harder reeds but i get better results with the softer reeds i play.
The reason there are fingerings for altissimo is for choice,some players get better results with different fingerings.
Although altissimo is important for tone and control of your horn,i find i am using it less and less mainly due to the fact some of the gigs i get are in eating environments where the audience much prefer lighter music.
Sonny Rollins on friday night on BBC hardly used altissimo at all and he was still great,although that might be down to his advanced years or maybe just choice.
Brian
Sensible post...
See the Altissimo fingerings might be relevant but (as you rightly point out) these should be tailored to each setup - therefore the fingering charts aren't that useful. Each player should take care to find the right specific fingering for himself...and these often aren't even listed in those charts.
Even when the right altissimo fingering is found...then one has to be careful to keep the set up constant or some altissimo wouldn't play as expected or would break too easily - a trusted and constant setup is very desirable indeed but very difficult to obtain as there are so many variables out there which play against our expectations (ambient temperature, humidity, reeds, mouthpieces). In brief, one spends hours/days/weeks finding the right altissimo fingerings and then in a certain situation these don't work = total waste of time.
It's much better relying on overtones and learing to think the note ahead so that the throat muscles work faster and faster = more reliable. You can have very fast fingers but these can't give you the right note if the setup or the throat aren't in sync.