For this page, I am the only member. I play solo soprano saxophone. I also play with groups including Grass Hair Duo and The Philadelphia Company, both located in Philadelphia (myspace.com/grasshairduo) and The Outside All-Stars while home in Montana.
Influences
Jazz and Improvisation:
Steve Lacy, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Cecil Taylor, Evan Parker, Charlie Parker, Lol Coxhill, Elvin Jones, Miles Davis, David Liebman, Test, William Parker, and many more.
Blues
B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Robert Johnson, Gary Davis, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Son House, Charlie Patton, and many more.
World Music
African drumming music, Indian Classical Music, Ravi Shankar
Pop/Rock Music:
The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, The Cream, Terry Peterson
Poetry:
David Budbill, Lao Tzu, e.e. cummings
Fine Arts:
Vincent van Gogh, Kandinsky, Picasso, Rodin, Monet, impressionism, expressionism, nonobjectivism
Various literature, philosophy, science, math, music, and poetry.
Sounds Like
Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill, Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk
Soprano saxophonist Heath Watts was born in Butte, MT. Watts calls his method of playing and composition NODOT, which means Non-Objective Dynamically Ordered Tones. "The Non-Objective portion comes from the ideas of the visual artist W. Kandinsky. He believed that art did not have to represent anything tangible in the "real world", and I believe the same thing about music. In my playing, you will hear the influences of jazz, blues, world music, noise, rock, and other genre, but when I improvise I like to consider pure sound, and how the tones and sounds fit together. This results in the Dynamically Ordered Tones portion of NODOT."
Good to have you as a friend! So great to see the internet in action this way, shortening distances between people.
I hope all's well with you and that you enjoy checking out my web site some time.
For occasional, new, refreshing, insightful and (possibly?!) valuable content, I encourage you to sign up for my free newsfeed/email newsletter (using the form on site at page right - high quality, low quantity, no spam!).
You might enjoy watching some of my films (use the on screen controls to skip between them):
Hey man, always happy to meet another sax player. Love the titles of your songs. "The boy from tater town"!! What a great name. Digging on your ideas. Best wishes,
Yeah Man, sounds good. We have a lot of mutual friends -thank you for the add request! May be we'll meet/play in person in NYC sometime. Peace man -love the Trane quotes.
Thanks so much for inviting me to be part of your ensemble last week. It was a wonderful experience playing with you, Matt and Francois and the music took off in unique and unexpected ways.
I've got a couple short clips from the evening up on my page if you'd like to have a look.
Thanks again for inviting me to participate and I hope we get to do it again soon.
