Two top NYC tenor players join the Nate Najar Trio tonight in the Side Door

We’re excited to have two great tenor sax players in the Side Door tonight (Friday, April 07), alongside the Nate Najar Trio, which will feature John Lamb and another Palladium favorite, Baltimore’s Chuck Redd on drums.  Blowing the horns will be Harry Allen, no stranger to the Side Door, and his fellow New York City sax man Grant Stewart.

 

I heard Harry and Grant playing together when they performed last night on WUSF’s All Night Jazz with Mike Cornette, and their sounds on the same instrument are very unique and different.

 

For tickets and information call the box office at 727 822-3590 or follow this link for on-line tickets.

 

This morning, I chatted with Harry Allen about the history of dueling saxophones in jazz and what we can expect to hear tonight:

 

HARRY – In jazz there’s been a history of tenor battles. Even back to Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins. Zoot Sims and Al Cohn, and others. So the idea is to take two saxophone players who are coming out of similar backgrounds but sound different, and put them together and basically battle it out.

 

PALLADIUMPAUL: But no one will be hurt in this process, right? It’s not like some East Coast-West Coast rap battle?

 

HARRY: The idea is to make great music that’s exciting- not to kill your opponent. We want to make exciting music and spur each other on to greater heights.”

 

PALLADIUMPAUL: Tell me more about Grant Stewart. It’s his first time in our club.

 

HARRY: Grant is originally from Toronto but he’s been in New York City for a long time. He is one of my absolute favorite sax players on the planet. I must love everything he plays and I always enjoy playing with him. He has a similar career to me – we’ve spent the last 30 years traveling around playing with everybody.

 

PALLADIUMPAUL: So what can we expect to hear tonight in the Side Door?

 

HARRY: We’ll do a lot of the great American songbook tunes and we’ll do some famous “two tenor” songs including “Blues Up and Down.” Which is a standard when two tenor players get together.  And since Nate is playing, we’ll do some Brazilian stuff, for sure.

 

PALLADIUMPAUL: Tell me about your current projects.

 

HARRY: I’ve been writing songs – teaming up with pianist and singer Judy Carmichael. We’ve been writing tunes together. We just came out with a CD of our songs called “Can You Love Once More.”