Lenny Pickett Virtuoso on tenor saxophone
Lenny Pickett is best known as the tenor saxophonist for the Saturday Night Live Band, he is one of the altissimo saxophone virtuosos. The altissimo register is a technique that almost seems like a requirement for today’s saxophonists. It is based on harmonics and allows you to achieve notes above the normal range of the saxophone.
For example, it is possible to play a low Bb (the lowest note on the instrument) and change the embouchure and airflow to blow the full series of harmonics of the low Bb (middle Bb, middle F, high Bb, high D, high, etc.) This technique can be clearly heard in the well-known opening theme of Saturday Night Live.
Lenny Pass has this to say about his equipment, in response to numerous inquiries: “I play a Selmer Paris Mark VI tenor (circa 1970) with a Berg Larsen 130 over 0 (SMS) mouthpiece and a Vandoren (blue case) bass clarinet reed number 3. .”
Pickett, born in New Mexico in 1954, is proficient not only on the saxophone, but also on the flute and clarinet. After dropping out of high school at Berkeley, he spent a brief stint studying with Bert Wilson, but surprisingly, other than that, instruction is entirely self-taught on the saxophone. He’s not seen as a traditional jazz musician, but he shows himself best in brief bursts of color that bring his trumpet life to center stage in R&B and rock arrangements. He is well known for his funky style and his ability to make the sax “scream”.
Pickett played the horns for Tower of Power from 1972 to 1981 and toured the world with them. Tower of Power still tours extensively today, albeit without Pickett. They released several Top 100 albums throughout Pickett’s career with them. Tower of Power played in many styles, from soul to funk to disco, and Pickett’s virtuoso playing was at home in all of them.
Tower of Power’s horn section has performed with a variety of other artists, including Santana, Heart, Poison, Phish and more. Since then, he has performed live and recorded with Rod Stewart, Elton John, Little Feat, Peter Gordon’s Love of Life Orchestra, Doc Kupka’s Strokeland Superband and many rock and jazz albums and film and television soundtracks. Pickett’s management biography describes his music as “polyphonic extravaganzas that manage to touch base with r&b, funk, swing, Latin-influenced and avant-garde; wind lines intertwine, shifting and rising in intensity”.
He has worked as a saxophonist and arranger for David Bowie, the Talking heads, and Laurie Anderson. As a composer, he has been commissioned to write works that combine classical and popular ideas for a variety of ensembles, including the New Century Saxophone Quartet. Due to his bizarre and wild self-taught style, his techniques are endlessly discussed on Internet forums, where players speculate about his fingering, whether or not he is using double or triple tounging, often asking each other “What is he doing?” Pickett?!??!”
He is currently a professor of jazz saxophone at New York University.