Catching Up: Logan Strosahl & Nick Sanders

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Eight years ago, when Rifftides was young, I posted this item from New York following one of the last conventions of the lamented International Association of Jazz Educators.

January 19, 2006

It is impossible to predict the course of an artist’s career, but here’s a name to file away: Logan Strosahl. He is a sixteen-year-old alto saxophonist with the Roosevelt High School Jazz Band from Seattle, Washington. Strosahl has the energy of five sixteen-year-olds, rhythm that wells up from somewhere inside him, technique, harmonic daring with knowledge to support it and—that most precious jazz commodity—individuality. If he learns to control the whirlwind and allow space into his improvising, my guess is that you’ll be hearing from Logan Strosahl.

After that, Strosahl was graduated from Roosevelt High, entered the New England Conservatory in Boston and earned his degree. Attracted to the jazz capital of the world, as jazz artists have been for nearly a century, he moved to Brooklyn in New York City. There, he teams with a fellow NEC graduate, pianist Nick Sanders. Like Strosahl, Sanders is gaining increasing attention. These days, most young musicians at the outsets of their careers make their own publicity. Strosahl and Sanders advertise themselves through a free-subscription series of videos posted on YouTube. Each installment is preceded by a spiel.

In this Dizzy Gillespie composition, Strosahl finds altissimo notes that may not have occurred to Charlie Parker. He and Sanders take improvisational counterpoint a step or two beyond Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond.