When you’re a little saxophone-playing gecko, even a model alto can seem like the size of a contrabass to you.
Trading 4s
Photography by Helen Kahlke
This wire & bead saxophone sculpture was a gift from one of my oldest and dearest friends. She and I were actually high school tenor saxophone partners.
Tanya and her husband have spent the past 15 or so years living in various African countries, where the two of them have been doing a variety of aid work. The gecko sculpture is from Tanzania.
…this is just my blog. My “real” website is www.bassic-sax.info. If you’re looking for sax info, you should check it out too.There’s lots there!
I had a cute little miniature alto like the one on the right. When I was working on cruise ships, I kept it on the music stand. I had built a tiny little sax stand out of coat hanger to rest it on.
One night, we were sitting in the balcony watching a normally funny comedian just absolutely BOMBING. At some point, my miniature horn got knocked over with a loud clatter in the middle of his set, and he spun around and looked at us, saying “What the hell was that?”
I held up the miniature sax and said “I dropped my horn!”
He asked “Well what are you going to do now?”
I have no idea where I came up with this response but I shouted back “I guess I’ll have to go into comedy!” The audience laughed harder than at any point in his set thus far.
He waited for the laughter to die down and shot back — “I’ve heard you play. You already have.”
From that point on, the audience was much more responsive and the rest of his set went reasonably well. I tried to apologize to him after the show, but he said “Fuck that, you saved my set. I owe you a beer.”
My little miniature alto on the right came with a stand and its own case. Did yours as well? It is actually the most realistic model saxophone that I’ve seen. It even has a little fake reed.
Mine came in a little jewelry case, but no stand and the mouthpiece was just a little brass cone flattened on the end. (I painted that black, just because.) I made the stand in the same shape as a real one, but of course without any moving parts or ability to disassemble it. Coat hangers are adequate building materials for something like this, and I didn’t have much else to work with on board.
Heh lookie here. I see someone got through my anti-spam filters. Congrats. 🙂
The stand for mine comes in 2 pieces: the base, and the holder itself. Quite slick actually. I always think these little miniatures are an interesting addition to my studio. (I have a couple of them, but this one is the most realistic)… As if I didn’t have enough life size saxophones crammed in there already. 😈