Eastbourne return is key career moment for saxophonist

SussexWorld

Tom Sangster is heaping up the pressure on himself with the saxophone concert he is offering in the Birley Centre at Eastbourne College on Wednesday, July 2 at 7pm.

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon. My name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely this

00:07afternoon to speak to Tom Sangster, an ex-saxophone player from Eastbourne. You are returning to

00:12Eastbourne for a concert in the Burleigh Centre at Eastbourne College on Wednesday July 2nd at 7pm.

00:18And this is a significant concert for you, a hugely significant concert. It's the biggest,

00:23most formal thing you've done since graduating. You're putting the pressure on yourself for this

00:28one, aren't you? Yes, so this is, this is me really getting back up, returning to a place

00:37that was incredibly transformational for me, and performing... You were a student of work. Yes,

00:42yeah, when I, so I used to, obviously like you said, I was a music scholar there, and I used to do a lot

00:48of jazz saxophone, and here was where I really, I made a switch to more classical side of things.

00:54So it's really great to be returning and performing a very challenging work that I put a lot of time

01:00into in a place that was very transformational for me. Yeah. And tell me a bit about the repertoire,

01:08the programme, how you set about deciding what you were going to play on that day.

01:13So I'm starting with something a bit lighter. We're starting with one of the

01:18Tango Etudes by Piet Zola. I'm starting with the third one. It's quite a nice and fun and fairly

01:26brief Tango Etude that, you know, you can perform it with piano or you can perform it without. So I

01:32think that will go down a treat, and it's going to be followed on by an equally charming piece. It's

01:38the Pequena Shardas by Pedro Itterald. And so as a Shardas that is, you know, it plays a lot with the

01:46light and the dark, the fast and the slow. And these are, these are basically just kind of to warm the

01:53audience up before I hit them with the 40 minute long Maslanka Concerto. Again, that's a piece that's

02:01special to you because of the challenges it contains. What are those challenges in the Maslanka?

02:06Well, it's a very, very technical piece. There's lots of extended techniques in this one. So lots

02:13of very, very high notes that kind of go beyond the range of the saxophone. Lots of very virtuosic

02:19passages as well in quite a fast tempo. And lots of also very, very chromatic writing as well. So

02:31there's lots of very difficult passages to get the fingers around. So it's been a good challenge to

02:38learn. And I'm also hoping to, fingers crossed, do it totally from memory as well.

02:43Wow.

02:44Just to put the pressure on a tiny bit more.

02:46How will you know in advance whether you can?

02:51Well, it's going well so far. And I'm on a good, good place with it. So we're just,

02:58me and my accompanist, we are just putting it together at the moment.

03:01Brilliant.

03:02Brilliant.

03:02Slowly. I've had the, I've had the luxury, actually, I have performed this recently in

03:08a more informal setting. And we performed four of the five movements. This is the big thing

03:15here is that a concerto is typically three movements. This is five movements. So we performed

03:19four of them. So now we're just putting the whole thing together and we're going to make it one

03:24seamless work.

03:25Great. And to increase the pressure on yourself, as if there's not pressure enough,

03:30you'll be recording this, won't you? Why?

03:32Yes.

03:32So what does that give you as a performer to know that it's being recorded?

03:36So it's, it's very, it's an interesting, creative development for me. It's a setting that I've not

03:45really spent too much time in. But it also gives me the tools to actually have some kind of start

03:52some library of my own music that I can use, that I, you know, people can listen to. It's also good

04:00for me for getting better, because obviously the process involves you actually developing creatively,

04:07being able to listen to myself a lot more and kind of nitpick things that I could do better,

04:13could do worse, you know. So it's, but mostly as well, just to actually have some of my own

04:21works out there that I can present to people for hopefully future opportunities as well.

04:27So yeah, it's being recorded visually and through audio as well. So hopefully,

04:34if it all goes well, be available on YouTube and Spotify.

04:37Fantastic. Well, Tom, good luck with it.

04:40Thank you very much.

04:41So Eastbourne College, Wednesday, the 2nd of July, 7pm. And tickets through TicketSource,

04:48Tom Sandster, plus tickets on the door. Lovely to speak to you. Hope it goes brilliantly.

04:52Yep. I'm sure it will.

04:53Thank you very much. Great to speak to you.

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