What's it like to be a jazz musician? I asked one.

How and why Alan Braufman became a jazz saxophonist, starting at the age of 8.

All my life I’ve listened to music, all kinds of music. I’ve written before about how important music has been to me, about its magical, transformative power and beauty. Music has shaped who I am and how I experience life. One of my great regrets is that I never learned to play an instrument. But when I was in my 30’s, I did try. I took saxophone lessons for months. I remember the first time I was able to coax a sound from my golden sax. It blew me away. I did that?! The problem was I wanted to play like John Coltrane immediately. I had little patience for the practice required to actually improve. I finally gave up. 

In part because of my own musical inadequacies, I have always admired and been curious about musicians. Why did they become musicians? What drives them? Who influenced them? And, for me, the great mystery: what is it like to make music? 

Although my own musical effort didn't work out, I did become friends with my old sax teacher, Alan Braufman. Alan has been a professional jazz saxophonist for over half a century. A few years after I took lessons with him, Alan moved to Salt Lake City, but we stayed in touch. To try to get some answers to these questions that have nagged me all these years, I recently called Alan. (His website is www.alanbraufman.com. He's @alanbraufman on Instagram and X. His record label: @valleyofsearch).

Below is an edited transcription of our conversation.

Alan Braufman (center)

RC: When did you first pick up a musical instrument? At what age?

AB: At 8, I started clarinet. Clarinet is really hard, harder than saxophone, at least in the approach. That led to the saxophone and flute, a natural progression. I started playing saxophone when I was 13 and the flute when I was 15.

RC: Whose idea was it to play the clarinet? Your parents? Yours?

AB: It was mine. But it was eeny-meeny-miney-moe. It was like, there's trumpet, there's trombone, there's clarinet. I'll try clarinet.  

RC: Why did you even want to play an instrument? I didn't want to play an instrument when I was a kid. Maybe that's abnormal, but I had no inclination or interest in playing an instrument. I liked listening to music. Why did you want to play?

AB: I don't know. I really didn't particularly want to play when I started playing because I didn't know that it would grab me like that. It was just something that my friends were doing and I figured I'd give it a try. And I kind of liked it.

RC: "Kind of liked it?" That's all?

AB: I liked it a bit. (laughs) It grew. It grows on you. You don't like it as much at 8 as you do later on, you know? 

RC: What led you ultimately, or quickly, to jazz as the thing that you wanted to play?

AB: That was my mom. My mom had really good musical taste. The music on in the house all the time was Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, Booker Little. Ella Fitzgerald. Duke Ellington. That's the music that was on in the house all the time, so around 8, 9 years old, I figured, that's the music that's on in everybody's house (laughs).

RC: Obviously it wasn't. What connected you to jazz though? It's one thing to appreciate it. I appreciate it. How did it spark this interest in becoming a jazz musician?

AB: I started listening to it seriously because it was always on in the house since I was born. Once I actually started playing when I was 8, it was more real to me, like, wow, that's a real instrument. That's the instrument I am playing, look what they can do with that! It was inspiring once I had a hand in it, trying to learn to play. 

RC: When do you think you first got the idea that it was something you wanted to do as a career?

AB: I know exactly the moment actually. It was an epiphany. I was 13 and I had saved my money to buy my first album myself. My mom bought the albums in the family. (So I was) striking out on my own, going a little further than she had gone. I saved my money doing chores and rode my bicycle around 10 miles to the record store that had this album. The album was Andrew Hill, Point of Departure on Blue Note [jazz label]. In 1964. It had Eric Dolphy on alto (sax), Joe Henderson on tenor (sax). Kenny Dorham on trumpet. Tony Williams on drums. I put the first tune on, I think it was called Refuge and Eric Dolphy takes a solo and it was just absolutely smoking. Up to that point, as a kid, you know, I wanted to be a baseball player. I'm not saying I could've been a successful baseball player, but I was 13. That's what I wanted to do. But in that moment, I changed my mind. I said no, man, this is it right here.

RC: That led to what?

AB: It led to practicing more seriously.

RC: Who were some of your earliest influences? Whose music grabbed you, influenced you, shaped your taste in what you wanted to do?

AB: That's an interesting topic because you can have influences that really shape the way you go, but the end product, what you become may not sound anything like that. I don't think I really sound much like my influences but they are my influences as far as helping me get to where I got. Those influences early were obviously Charlie Parker. You can't play alto saxophone without being influenced by him. And Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry, trumpet player. Some of his 1960s albums on Blue Note, Complete Communion and Symphony for Improvisers. The concept that he had there was for the music not stopping from tune to tune. It'd be like a suite form and flow one to the next and the music just never stops, keeps evolving. I've used that a lot in my albums.

Charlie Parker (left), photo credit: U.S. State Dept.

Don Cherry (right), photo credit: Brian McMillen

RC: What was the first jazz group that you fronted?

AB: When I went to Berklee [College of Music] in Boston, my first year there was 1969 and we had a quintet. I guess I was the leader just because I was writing for it. Nobody else was writing. But it was kind of a cooperative group. That year, we played a lot in Boston at the anti-war rallies and [I] realized that the music really resonated with that crowd, which was nice.

RC: What was the name of that group?

AB: Alan Braufman's Energy Music. We did a lot that first year. The drummer, Ralph Williams, he was the only one in the band who had a car. His car was a VW Bug and we had an upright bass, an entire set of drums and five people and the instruments and we used to get it all in that car. Five people, plus all that equipment in a VW Bug. The way we'd do it, we'd have some friends on the outside of the car and they'd shut the door for us. Half the bass would be coming out the window.

Alan Braufman

RC: What was your first album? 

AB: That was Valley of Search which was recorded in 1974 and released a year later, in 1975. 

RC: When you set out to make an album, what are you thinking? Are you thinking about specific songs or tunes or ideas in a specific sequence? 

AB: The first thing I think about is: I hope I have a good reed today. (laughs) Because if you can't find that good reed, it will sink your whole session.

RC: What's a good reed?

AB: A reed that will allow you to get the sound you want to get on the saxophone. They're not all good. If they were all good, all saxophone players would be a lot richer these days with all the money we spend on reeds.,

RC: Ok, you have a good reed. Now what?

AB: Everybody's different in this respect. With a lot of musicians, especially in Europe these days, it's just improvised music, and there's no composition. You get together and play. With good players, that can really be fun. That can really be a drag without good players but anything is a drag without good players if you're playing music. But I've never wanted to do that with my albums. It's sort of like I want to do something that is uniquely my own, so composition is really important for me. So I go in and we have the specific tunes that we're going to record. For my new album, Infinite Love Infinite Tears, we had a four-hour rehearsal and we did a live performance before the session and the next day we went in and recorded the album in one day. It's the live gig that's the best rehearsal for that.

RC: How many live performances have you done, just guessing, in your life? Hundreds? Thousands?

AB: I really couldn't even guess. Probably not thousands. It would be a different question if you asked how many live performances have I done that I really wanted to do. (laughs). Because a lot of those live performances were situations where, like, I used to play weddings and stuff like that. I'm not the type of person who likes to be at parties, so I was always miserable being at someone else's party. I used to say to myself, I'm thankful for the fact that I'm in a place where I can make money playing music. I'm not complaining. I don't want to jinx that. But, that being said, I'd tell myself, you know, if they would pay the dishwasher the same amount I'm paid, I'd switch. I'd wash the dishes rather than play this music for three hours. There were a lot of those. There were also obviously good gigs too.

Alan Braufman

RC: In a good gig in a club, can you tell if the audience is reacting to your music? If they're getting it? Can you sense that or do you just play?

AB: Well, you're going to just play. Whether you sense it or not, you're not going to stop.

RC: Well, can you tell?

AB: Generally you can but sometimes you're wrong. Sometimes the vibe will feel great and people walk out and act like they didn't care. Other times, you think they aren't into it and they give you a standing ovation. It's hard to be accurate but you think you can tell when you're playing just by looking around and see what people are doing.

RC: What does playing music, expressing yourself through jazz, what does it do for you? What's the feeling like?

AB: The nice thing about music is it's so undefinable, what you're putting in, what you're saying, what you're getting, what the audience is getting, what I'm getting. First of all, I think, with any instrument, that if you have developed a really good sound on that instrument, it's physically a good feeling just to play and create that sound. It sort of vibrates through your head and body. It starts there. That's why I was joking but seriously going back to the reeds. If you have an impediment to getting your sounds, for me, it messes up not only your sound but my ideas get - I'm distracted. So that feeling of just getting the sound is really nice when you get it. It's a constant challenge to your ideas, this math going through your head in real time. It is fun. And add the emotional expression in there.

RC: Last question - possibly a difficult question; maybe an easy question, but what is jazz? How would you define or explain jazz to someone?

AB: That is a tough one. That's not an easy one. I don't even know if it has an answer. If you look at the lineups in a lot of jazz festivals, there's no jazz musicians in there. Good performers but not really jazz and you have to say: what is jazz in that case? If you're saying this is not, then what is? I don't know. It's kind of like you know it when it's there. It's not only, what is jazz? What is bee bop? What is swing? What is avant garde? I just try to play what I hear and what I like and people can call it what they want.

RC: Last question for real. When I say the last question, there’s always one more last question. If you weren't a jazz musician, what would you be or like to be? What would Plan B be? Something a little more realistic than playing for the Yankees.

AB: I don't know. What I would've been if I hadn't been a musician. I sort of went into without fallback, just make it work somehow or another. 

RC: "I don't know" is a perfectly good answer.

AB: Yeah. I have not a clue.

RC: Well, you found the right path. Good for you.

AB: I'm so happy with it. 

RC: You're 73 now. How long do you think you're going to keep playing?

AB: Till I can't. Might be tomorrow. Might be 20 years. I don't know.

Braufman’s latest album

The New Yorker magazine recently included this item about Alan in its Talk of the Town section:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/07/08/alan-braufmans-loft-jazz-seance