Blue Tenor

Lenny Pickett is best known as the tenor saxophonist of the Saturday Night Live Band, he is one of the virtuosos of altissimo saxophone. The altissimo register is a technique that closely seems like a requirement for saxophonists today. It’s based on harmonics and enables you to achieve notes above the normal range of the saxophone.

For example, it is possible to finger a low Bb (the lowest note on the instrument) and by altering the embouchure and air stream to blow the full overtone series of the low Bb (middle Bb, middle F, high Bb, high D, high F, and so on.) This technique may be heard distinctly in the well known opening theme to Saturday Night Live.

Lenny passes says this in regards to his equipment, in response to galore inquiries: “I play a Selmer Paris Mark VI tenor (circa 1970) with a Berg Larsen 130 over 0 (SMS) mouthpiece and a number 3 Vandoren (blue box) bass clarinet reed.”

Pickett, born in New Mexico in 1954, is competent not only with saxophone, but also on flute and clarinet. After dropping out of high school in Berkeley, he expended a brief amount of time studying underneath Bert Wilson, but amazingly, other than that instruction is totally self taught on the saxophone. Not viewed as a traditionalisti jazz player, he is best showcased in short bursts of color bringing the life of his horn to center stage in R&B and rock arrangements. He is well known for his funky style, and his capacity to make the sax “scream.”

Pickett played with the Tower of Power horns from 1972 to 1981, and toured the world with them. Tower of Power still tours broad today, altho without Pickett. They freed multiple Top 100 albums over the course of Pickett’s career with them. Tower of Power played in numerous styles, from soul to funk to disco, and Pickett’s virtuoso playing felt at home in all of them.

Tower of Power’s horns division has performed with a potpourri of other artists including Santana, Heart, Poison, Phish, and more. He has since performed live and recorded with Rod Stewart, Elton John, Little Feat, Peter Gordon’s Love of Life Orchestra, Doc Kupka’s Strokeland Superband, and galore rock and jazz albums and film and television soundtracks. Pickett’s management’s bio describes his music as “polyphonic extravaganzas which manage to touch base with r&b, funk, swing, Latin influence and the avant-garde; horn lines twist around one another, shifting and building 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 mixing classical and frequent ideas for a potpourri of ensembles including the New Century Saxophone Quartet. Due to his strange and wild self taught style, his proficiencies are ceaselessly discussed on Internet forums, where players speculate on his fingering, whether or not he’s using double or triple tounging, often asking each other “What is Pickett doing?!??!”

He is presently a professor of jazz saxophone for New York University.

Blue Tenor Photo

Blue Tenor Photo

Blue Tenor Photo

Blue Tenor Picture