She’s not too interested in the conventional categories of jazz: Saxophone player Susanne Alt is doing her own thing and has been gaining respect from colleagues.
Once “Saxify” is in your head, it’s hard to get rid of it. Not too bad though. Rough, ultradry bass, soulful vocals and very, very funky horn parts. If you start your day with “Saxify” you’ll swing effortless through the morning until lunch break. Continue with another song by Susanne Alt: The relaxed jazz track “Things to do” should be the best recipe to lift you up from the after lunch dip. In the evening maybe a bit loungy house - the music of the Würzburg saxophonist suits many times of the day.
Sunday 29th of October, she will perform at the jazz festival of the Jazzinitianive Würzburg, together with two woodwind players: Dirk Rumig and Johannes Liepold - and Pheel, providing pocket keyboards and beatbox. They will perform perform tunes by Rumig, Liepold and Alt. “There will be a few arrangements but I hope that as much as possible will be improvised. Let’s se what’s possible in that moment.”
Susanne Alt, born 1978 in Würzburg, has been living in the Netherlands for 21 years. She started her classical saxophon study in Nuremberg at the ag of 17. One year later she received the Siemens Jazzförderpreis during the jazz workshop in Erlangen. She went to Hilversum, which was known to be the best jazz conservatory of Europe. Hilversum is also the city of tv casting and reality formats of Big Brother and Superstar, but also Metropole Orkest, specialised in crossover projects and entertainment music, always looking for new talent.
After two years the conservatories of Hilversum and Amsterdam fused in one school, Susanne Alt moved to Amsterdam where she’s been living since then, apart from postgraduate studies in Berlin. “Hilversum fit me very well in the beginning because of its size. Being 18 in Amsterdam would have been a bit tough” , she says.
In Amsterdam jazz is part of daily life.
Very soon she couldn’t imagine to live in Germany again. “The climate for jazz is much better in Amsterdam. More important are mayb only Paris and New York, The jam scene used to be really big and still is.” There are still 4-5 really good jazz jam sessions per week in town. “ Amsterdam is great as a musician. You hop on your bike and start to ride and you are at a jazz session. Playing on sessions helps for devloping, grinding out the kilometers to become a better musician.” Here, musicians can gain more experience, where jazz is part of daily life.
But also in the Netherlands the jazz scene is changing. “Since 10-15 years, the dj culture has been becoming much bigger, for me it’s not bad at all. I always have been playing with dj’s as well. Nowadays, it’s less jazz, more house. Also, I started dj’ing and producing myself.” She’s not too interested in the conventional categories of jazz: She makes the music she likes to hear, and sees herself a bit more on the danceable side.
“The intellectual jazz which pretends to be free only seems to be free because there’s always a concept behind it.”
Susanne Alt doesn’t have a problem with being commercial when it’s necessary. Playing at Würzburg Golfclub: “I like it. How did painters earn their money? Portraying (…) aristocrats. The real work they created in their spare time. For musicians it has been the same.”
After 5 jazz albums Susanne Alt delivered “Saxify”, an album in the tradition of her idols of Rhtyhm & Blues and Funk, like James Brown, George Clinton, Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley.
The feedback (for Saxify, red) is big; reviews and airplay from all over the world, all the way to South Africa and even a radio station from the Niger Delta who plays the title track very often.
On stage with the legendary J.B.’s
Fred Wesley already recorded on another album in 2009 (On Track, red), and when he asked Susanne to fill in for his saxophon player, all of a sudden she was on stage with th J.B.’s, the previous band of James Brown. “The bass player of ‘I feel good’ was right there on stage next to me (referring to a jam with bass player Fred Thomas of the James Brown Band in Istanbul. Actually it was Bernard Odum who recorded ‘I feel good’. Go to Discogs for Fred Thomas’s work; red), that was incredibly cool”. Several extensive soundchecks had to be sufficient to get into this very special southern groove feeling. It worked, as you can see on Youtube (link: Pass The Peas in Jazzclub Minden). Susanne Alt in one row with Fred Wesley, Gary Winters, Phillip Whack and on the right side, guitar player Reggie Ward. Her typical, dense but flexible alto sax sound fits seamless. “It’s like barock, you just have to get to know the stylistics”, she adds dryly. “But I’ll never be one of the guys, also because I am female” (Referring to the male spoken parts/sketches of The J.B.’s, red).
A few of those guys returned services and performed on “Saxify”, for example Gary Winters and Fred Wesley. “We exactly had one day in the studio at the end of a tour. I thought, Fred might be tired. But in this situation his embouchure was great, as a matter of fact, because he had been touring for weeks.” She prepared 11 tracks and even pre-recorded it to check if the horn arrangements worked. They worked. “I thought, maybe we can get 4-5 tunes done, but Fred played 9-10 because he liked the music so much”, Susanne tells proudly.
The 33. jazz festival of the Jazzinitiative Würzburg will take place on 28th and 29th of October at Felix-Fechenbach-Haus. (…) go to the website
on 12/10/2017