Alto Saxophone
The alto saxophone is the best-known member of the family Adolphe Sax patented in the 1840s: a conical brass body played with a single-reed mouthpiece, which places it — despite its metal — among the woodwinds. Sitting in the expressive middle register, the alto can whisper like a flute or cry like a human voice, which made it the defining sound of jazz and a fixture of everything from classical repertoire to funk.
How Deniz Mahir plays it
For Deniz Mahir Kartal the saxophone is the western counterpart to his Anatolian winds. His work spans traditional, classical, jazz, modern and electronic music, and the alto is his voice on the jazz and contemporary side of that spectrum — a reminder that the breath behind a duduk and the breath behind a saxophone are the same breath.