How do you do?
The following is a typical exchange that occurs when a stranger gets curious about what I’m carrying around in the case strapped to my back:
Curious Stranger: Is that a violin (or trumpet, or trombone)?
Brian Sacawa: No, it’s a saxophone.
CS: Oh, you must play jazz.
BS: No, I play classical music.
CS: Oh, you mean like Mozart and Beethoven?
BS: Well, not exactly. I play new music.
CS: What’s new music?
Hmmm, what is new music anyway? Jason Eckardt and Milton Babbitt write new music. So do John Adams and Michael Daugherty. Edgard Varese and Charles Ives are still programmed on “new music” concerts and they’re dead. So how new is new?
And what does it sound like? Well, new music is really dissonant, right? Sometimes it repeats itself over and over and over and over again. It’s amplified and uses computers. New music is only for “serious” and learned listeners. Is it?
I think you can see where I’m going. It’s really difficult to explain the kind of music I play to someone not familiar with the world of contemporary classical music, or new music. Maybe it might be easier for a composer, who could claim, “Well, I’m a modernist composer,” or serialist, or post-minimalist, and so on. Maybe it’s not that simple. Certainly as a new music performer you can’t label yourself like that. Nobody just plays New Complexity, or spectral music, for example. Perhaps you could earn a reputation for being a specialist at a certain style, but surely that’s not all you would play. At any rate, I’m not sure I’ll ever have a solid answer for that curious stranger.