Organ and Saxophone Improvisation

Yesterday night I played a long awaited concert of improvisations called "The Fight Between David and Goliath" with perhaps the most famous saxophonist in Lithuania, Petras Vysniauskas at Vilnius University St. John's church in Vilnius, Lithuania.

The program was modeled after the Biblical Sonata No. 1 by Johann Kuhnau (1660-1722) I played a month ago at the same church as part of my ongoing series of organ recitals from the cycle of "Seven Centuries of Organ Music" where I introduce to organ music lovers composers and pieces from various historical periods and national schools of organ composition. This Kuhnau Sonata was part of the 12th concert from this series devoted to the Middle German Organ Baroque School.

So yesterday we used all 8 of Kuhnau's descriptions of the fight between David and Goliath including boasting of Goliath, trembling of Israelites, the courage of David, the fight itself, the flight of Philistines, the joy of Israelites, women's concert in honor of the victory, and general rejoicing and dancing.

However, to make a musical story more complete, we also added 4 additional movements at the beginning: David with the sheep at night, David's journey to his brothers at Saul's army, the armies of Philistines and Israelites and Goliath's appearance.

I hope you will enjoy listening to this video excerpt from this concert as much as we enjoyed creating music together. This video is an additional improvisation we played right after the David and Goliath program.

It starts slowly and quietly in the B Dorian mode. Then we create conversations between saxophone and various organ stops. It all ends with a joyful Fortissimo using most of the resources of this magnificent organ.

By the way, do you want to learn my special powerful techniques which help me to master any piece of organ music up to 10 times faster? If so, download my video Organ Practice Guide.