After nearly a decade of artistic research, and several particularly intensive years of focused work, my method for saxophone—and wind instruments more broadly—is finally reaching completion. This year will see the publication of two complementary books under the title Sculpting Air.
The first is a method book with a strong theoretical foundation, intended for researchers, educators, and advanced instrumentalists. The second is an accompanying etude and practice book, aimed at educators and performing musicians, designed to facilitate training and to enable an accessible, practical integration of this transformative process into daily practice.
The original aim of this research was to offer highly specialised practitioners—saxophone players and composers working within the classical–contemporary field—a new tool for approaching some of the instrument’s most complex territories: multiphonics, timbre, and microtonal tuning (SpectraSax). What ultimately emerged, however, was something both simpler and more far-reaching: a new path into the materiality of sound itself.
Rather than proposing new techniques as isolated phenomena, the work articulates a theory of sound production in which “simple,” advanced, and so-called “extended” techniques are understood as different manifestations of the same fundamental processes. This simplification does not belong to a specific style or aesthetic; it operates between players, instruments, and air.
More soon.
For further details, feel free to contact me directly at:
jonathanchazan@gmail.com
