A couple of weeks ago, T and I had occasion to pay another visit to the St. Louis Symphony. The show opened with Gershwin's Cuban Overture, which was a rollicking good time.
The next two pieces were contemporary works composed by John Adams, one of them specifically for Timothy McAllister on the saxophone. McAllister is a saxophone professor at Northwestern University as well as a frequent performer with various orchestras. Neither T nor I were big fans of the John Adams pieces - not our type of music - but I did really enjoy watching McAllister on stage with his sax. It was like he was dancing with it.
The final piece was Gershwin's Concerto in F, with Jon Kimura Parker on the piano. Lovely, more melodic, which I like. I have a hard time following scatty, instrumental jazz. Mostly it just makes my head hurt. I was happy for the return to Gershwin, and we even got a bonus Joplin piece for the encore!
And I learned something about saxophones too. They're generally not included in orchestral compositions because they weren't actually invented until the middle of the 19th century, and most of the classic works had already been written by then.
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