Now that I am a musician again, I was looking for inspiration online, I mean YouTube has everything, right? Man, it did not take long. After a couple of videos on how reeds are made and buying the right saxophone, I started getting videos for a band of what looked like street musicians playing in a subway. No thanks was my original opinion until I opened it up and was almost immediately floored.
These guys are playing a Tuba, er sousaphone (excuse me), a trombone, a tenor sax, a bari sax, a trumpet and a small drum set. They might be a lot of things but they shouldn't be cool, but fuck, the music they are playing sounds out of this world. I mean it is the same classics everyone plays in junior high, My Girl, Stand By Me, Funkytown but with so much energy, they seem like different songs.
It turns out, the bari sax guy was the breakout star and has now left the band. I tracked his path and he went to another similar band, Too Many Zooz, to working with Beyoncé and the Dixie Chicks somewhat in the background, but what I read in the comments was that his performance was being discussed the next day in the morning news rounds. I then found the guy in front of an orchestra and he is playing the star, like what a piano great or a violin virtuoso does, with a bari sax. This guy, Leo Pellegrino is something special. He dances the whole time with a big ass bari sax, making it look sexy and light as a feather.
He has also figured out how to get more range out of a horn, creating noises that would or could sound annoying, but he makes it sound like he means it, mostly with attitude. I could bite on the mouthpiece and get a weird shriek out of mine, back in the day and I would use the sound occasionally, but he makes the horn shriek and does scales with that sound, it is most impressive.
I don't know how I hadn't heard of these guys before, every song they have on YouTube has 2 to 4 million views, that is huge for a "subway band". I saw them perform in a studio and they go for dorkier instruments, like a bass clarinet, and even a contrabass clarinet, which almost too big to walk around with. In a time where most music is created electronically, I love that these guys exist and are still making music the way it should be, by playing on instruments that require years of dedication and sacrifice.
I even checked if they were touring anywhere near here in the coming year, but it appears they stay in the northern states. I still consider it a win to have found these guys. I already looked them up on my Spotify and they have music there, so I can listen while driving around now, anytime.
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