Senior Michael Dannov plays the saxophone in East’s Blue Knights Jazz Band. He plans on continuing his craft in college and wherever it takes him after.
A:When did you start playing the saxophone?
M: Well I started playing music in fifth grade, elementary school. I just started in the band program on clarinet, but I wasn’t really serious about it until high school. When I got to high school there were all of these seniors and upperclassmen who were all really great players and cool people too, so I really had role models in them. I just kinda decided like, “I wanna play like they do.” So I started picking up the saxophone more, because I just found it more of an interesting instrument. Over time it just elevated to the point where I’m at now where it’s the most important thing in my life.
A: Are you planning on continuing playing into college?
M: Yeah I’m going to be going to a music college. I’m pretty sure, the one I’m feeling the most is called the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York.
A: So is Jazz the type of music you like playing the most?
M: I’d say so. I think there’s a lot of variation in jazz as well. I believe it kind of transcends just the standard, what someone would think of jazz, like swinging. There’s whole different kinds of sub-genres of jazz that are played and I love accessing all of those. I play rock with other people. It’s not my first choice, but if someone wants to play rock, I’d love to.
A: What bands do you play in at East?
M: Well at East I’m in the Blue Knights Jazz Band. Then to do Jazz you kind of have to do marching and all that, so I do that too. I also play in the musical pit every year, which is one of my favorite parts of the year, it’s very, very fun. I think that’s it for East, but I’m also in a quartet of my own. We play jazz, it’s a bass, a drummer and a baritone saxaphone player and me on tenor sax.
A: What is the most difficult part about playing saxaphone?
M: Oh man, it’s gotta be… I’m always listening to other saxaphone players, masters that came before me. The best way, I think, in any art form to learn about it is to appreciate the work of the masters that came before you. So the hardest part for me is having to listen to these people who are just masters at the instrument and having to compare myself to them and just feeling like, “Man, I’m no good,” because these guys are just incredible prodigies, geniuses, that I have a hard time matching myself up with. But that’s why I do what I do. I try to practice three to four hours a day just in order to try and better myself.
Listen to Dannov play “Bird”, a composition honoring jazz musician Charlie “Bird” Parker, and talk about his experience with the saxophone
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