Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

As you know I’m a sax player myself. And one technique I’ve never tried out was circular breathing. Why? Because from the start of my saxophone career my approach to music was to play my horn naturally based on my own breathing rhythm. Especially from Kendo I adopted a breathing technique which didn’t allow circular breathing. Kendo taught me to breathe “naturally”, i.e. breath in and breath out as my body wants to do it. So it was unnatural for me to play very long tones.

I found already out during my first year playing the horn that when you stop breathing and playing at the same time, you are able to hear “silence.” Silence is then an “unheard space.” Thus creating and manipulating space between tones and when to stop playing became major issues in my music.

Developing my own sound on the horn was my priority and still is. Sound dynamics became also an important part of my music. Through Kendo and Zen practice I learned that extreme performances in general and in music, such as sustaining very long notes, executing very fast and complicated chord progressions, wouldn’t make me a “real” musician. A real musician just plays himself and would use a technique as a tool to express an idea. Nowadays musicians depend mostly only on technique without having any idea what they are doing. Circular breathing could be one of these dangerous techniques to lose yourself.

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