Q: When did you start playing the saxophone and who introduced it to you?
A: I started playing the saxophone right between the summer of sixth grade and seventh grade, so right before I went into middle school. My dad always had this saxophone that I’m playing right now in his closet. Sometimes as a little kid I would see it and bring it out and that summer my parents gave me a choice: do you want to do saxophone or do you want to do photography? And I just kinda thought eh, I had already done photography last year, might as well just do saxophone. So I started getting into it, then it started to get really fun because my teacher was really proactive in my learning so he would have me listen to all these cool things like, “eventually you could do this, let’s start with doing this and that” and it built up really fast afterwards
Q:What type of music do you play? Do you prefer one genre to another?
A: I play both classical and Jazz music. I kinda like both really because with both genres I could kind of integrate a lot of emotion. Like with classical there’s more of this refinement, this sorrow, even a little bit of joy, kind of like this aristocratic joy. And then for jazz I could add more energetic emotions such as absolute happiness and then there’s this kind of dry, little bit of anger there’s also a bit of this really laid back feeling to it you can add.
Q: Are you in any bands or groups?
A: I am in the Shawnee Mission East Band right now, the marching band and symphonic band. I used to be in Jazz Band but because of my IB schedule I wasn’t able to take Jazz band.
Q: So do you prefer playing at football games or in concerts?
A: Well it’s kind of a trade off really, because it’s really fun to be in the football games because you just get this energy going and then you play all this really fun music like pop, rock, sometimes a bit of reggae. But the downside is you’re wearing an inch-thick marching uniform, so it’s not really that comfortable to wear. But being in a symphonic band, it’s a lot more laid back and there’s not as much energy but it’s kind of a bit more relaxing to play in and the uniforms are a lot more comfortable.
Q:What is your favorite part about playing the saxophone?
A: My favorite part about playing the saxophone is that i am able to try to interperet the songs the way I would see it. When I started playing music it was pretty much two years, even a year ago that I started to get that music had these specific feelings it wants to convey. It was kind of fun for me to connect those emotions to certain memories I had back when I was a kid. Last years audition music, I kinda tied it back to when I loved living in Seattle but then I had to move so it kinda conveyed that little bit of sorrow. And for the jazz pieces it’s kind of this uppity mood so I imagine myself playing along with friends.
Listen below to two excerpts of Kim’s pieces.
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