Renowned Twin Cities tenor saxophonist Irv Williams shares his appreciation for the classical composition “Paris, A Night Piece - The Song of a Great City" by Frederick Delius.
MPR’s Chris Roberts presents Open Ears, an ongoing series of audio features that explores how contemporary musicians' listening habits shape their music-making. Each installment features a Twin Cities musician talking about a favorite piece of music from a genre outside his or her own. The series taps musicians' wide-ranging tastes and deep musical knowledge as it explores the surprising and revealing influences that affect today's sounds.
Transcripts
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CATHY WURZER: You're listening to Morning Edition on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Cathy Wurzer. We've spent a good portion of the summer sampling the musical tastes of local musicians in a series called Open Ears. Each installment features a musician describing a favorite piece of music from a genre other than their own.
GARLAND WILLIAMS: My name is Irvin Garland Williams better known as Irv or Mr. Smooth. I'm a musician. I play the tenor sax.
[JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING]
CATHY WURZER: 86-year-old saxophonist Irv Williams has been a fixture in the Twin Cities Jazz scene for more than 50 years. Williams is also an avid classical music listener. His favorite classical piece comes from a composer known in Jazz circles for his Jazz sensibilities.
IRVIN GARLAND WILLIAMS: The number that I like very much is by the composer-- not well-known composer, but Duke Ellington liked him very much. And a lot of Jazz musicians are fans of his-- Frederick Delius, and the number was Song for a Great City.
[CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYING]
I liked it because of the fact that it had a lot of Jazz chords and Jazz voicings. And I'd never heard that before, and it just killed me. I thought it was great.
[CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYING]
Duke Ellington said that he liked him from the standpoint of his melodies. That is something that he could harm. And I don't know whether he did anything or did this stuff with his band, but I'd be willing to bet you he did somewhere down the line. He was a fan, and he pushed his music.
[CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYING]
The tune that we were talking about, Song for a Great City, he had all kinds of little notations and stuff going on that make you see a city not as a bustling city with all the traffic and anything, but as more or less sitting in night time when everything was very beautiful and people sleeping, and the moon was up and everything, and you look up and you hear this music. And that's what gave me chills up my spine, more or less.
[CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYING]
I just think that he should be more played than he is, that the symphony orchestras and the chamber, especially the chamber orchestras. The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra should do an all Delius program because as music demands that, such a thing happen.
CATHY WURZER: Jazz saxophonist Irv Williams, his favorite classical piece is Paris, the Song of a Great City by Frederick Delius. Open Ears is produced by Minnesota Public Radio's Chris Roberts.
[CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYING]