Otis Murphy plays Maslanka or: The Best Musical Experience of my Life
The U.S. Navy Band hosts an annual International Saxophone Symposium right around this time in January every year, typically at one of a few campuses in central Virginia. The 2021 symposium was predictably cancelled, which is understandable yet still so unfortunate. I’ve looked forward to it every year for about half a decade now. This is a short anecdote about my visit last year, with my friend Erik, when I experienced what sits pretty comfortably as the best musical experience of my life, so far. If you have time, of course the whole video above is a worthwhile listen. But the piece I reference starts at 1:13:20, with the really special moment taking place right at 1:14:30.
Last January—when 2020 still seemed like a year full of prospects and growth—my friend Erik and I drove down to George Mason University, one of many frequent hosting grounds for the annual U.S. Navy Band Saxophone Symposium. But despite this being my fourth year attending (my first being when I first heard David Pope perform live, which kicked off the inspiration for my very first post here), and despite knowing what we were more or less “in for,” I still was left beyond words at the situation I found myself in as we found our seats for the big nighttime performance that usually concludess Saturday’s menu of recitals.
As Erik and I found our seats, I couldn’t help but notice some of the company seated around us. While Erik was immediately to my left, it appeared Otis Murphy’s whole family was proudly placed in the front balcony row just to my right. And, of course, he was one of only a few very special featured solo artists for the night, as well as one of the big names in attendance for the whole symposium. But it didn’t end there…
In every direction around me were doctoral students at some of the nation’s most esteemed conservatories, alongside their professors. Familiar faces of composers and performers and quartets that had clearly spent every waking moment of the past few days together. I sat in the audience of David Biedenbender’s massive new saxophone quartet concerto, Severance, having only bumped into him earlier that day at a smaller recital venue for a different concert. It doesn’t take a lot of time with me to know enough that this environment, where everyone is a friend of the saxophone (and probably each other, too), is just about my heaven.
The kind of days the symposium offers, where you maybe listen to about ten recitals a day consecutively with an always-not-long-enough break for lunch, before attending some big concert that night, all of which features or consists solely of saxophone, these kinds of days can be exhausting for even those that truly love the instrument. Erik and I witnessed so many wonderful approaches to classic works, as well as heard some brilliant premieres of new ones. Even the time walking between recitals is amazing, because you casually walk along or cross paths with someone who just happened to record that version of some sonata that you listened to about fifty times when preparing the work for your own jury. It feels like walking around Comic-Con, if the characters you saw were your real life heroes and models, and not just people dressed like them.
Anyway, Erik and I were at this final Saturday concert, seated without exaggeration by some of the most admirable and remarkable artists and minds in the field. Seated, again, literally next to the family of the featured soloist and—for my two cents—the best saxophone player alive.
It goes without saying that the entire performance of the Maslanka Concerto that evening was jaw-dropping, but there was also a moment very early on that, even a year later, comes to mind quite often. In the beginning theme of the first movement, the saxophone player performs a simple melody that moves quickly to a subsequent phrase with an octave leap. This is pretty typical Maslanka, and I had heard it played before, generously, probably a few hundred times. But this one was different. In this performance, as you would hear from the timestamp above, the octave wasn’t even perceivable. Murphy’s control over the saxophone was so careful that the two notes were seamless. I went home and spent a few hours trying to recreate that phrase as Otis had played it maybe a thousand times, never even coming close. I am tempted to say that the video above, recorded as well as it is, does not even do this moment justice. I specifically remember Erik and I looking at each other in awe after it happened, with this unspoken appreciation and wonderment of what we had heard, and I know we weren’t the only ones. And, honestly, it felt really cool to be so studied and invested in any kind of music that a single interval could elicit such a reaction.
I still listen to that recording of the Maslanka Concerto quite often. I am still amazed and humbled by the amount of musicianship Otis Murphy infused into a single interval. I want to grab the shoulders of a younger version of myself and holler at them for ever struggling to make a scale musical, let along a single pair of notes. Even so, my biggest take away had very little to do with the music, and everything to do with my perspective in the audience. More than almost any other single moment, I was overcome with a sense of belonging. I was literally surrounded by my heroes, my idols, and my friends. I experienced a moment of mastery by a living legend in the company of a group I knew appreciated it just as much as I did. It felt like watching a movie for the first time with a close friend, where you both were convinced by the end that it was the best thing you’d ever seen, except times a few extra hundred other audience members. Everyone in that room was united by something, and it was something beautiful.
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I don’t think I’m one to really judge the listening tastes of others. Even so, what I came away from that experience with was the knowledge that, in the right setting, music can provide that kind of experience for anyone. It is literally a unifying type of ceremony. And, if I experienced it with a single pair of notes, who I am to say what others might discover in their own musicianship to feel the same. Every song is somebody’s home.
I’m grateful for the symposium, and miss it like hell this year. I'm also grateful for the people in my life like Erik, who I get to share these things with. Maybe I’m some special kind of cold-blooded for it to take nearly a year without live music to start missing it as much as I do, but memories like this just mean too much to ignore what we know we’ve all been missing out on. I sure hope it’s not much longer, now. In the meantime, what can we be but grateful to reflect on these times to help really value and appreciate what they offer once it returns?
