London, 2026​

 

During this interview, I swap seats with another artist and ask the questions I wish I were asked. Today, I meet with American musicians Saul Dautch and Bryan Cowan after the release of their debut collaborative album Downward Current. 

 

Saul, Bryan, tell us about yourself. 

 

SD: I am originally from Florida. Bryan and I met at an event hosted by the society, where we both performed and began our association in 2023. After hearing each other play, we began discussing ideas for collaboration. We are lucky to have been named one of The Futures of the Baritone Saxophone by the Low Blow Society of New York, founded by DownBeat Award-winning baritone saxophonist Gary Smulyan.

 

BC: Saul and I are New York-based baritone saxophonists. I am originally from Greeley, Pennsylvania, lived in Philadelphia and studied at the University of the Arts, and in 2021 moved to New York to play. I first became aware of Saul in 2022, in the busking culture of Washington Square Park, but met him later at Low Blow’s Under 30 Baritone Saxophone Festival in 2023.

 

Tell us about Downward Current, your latest release.

 

BC: Downward Current is a collection of Saul and my tunes with the support of Louie Leager and Adam Ray. It was born ultimately as the natural reaction to the 2023 Futures of the Baritone Saxophone festival and subsequent Low Blow Music celebration of Ronnie Cuber’s life, featuring pretty much all of our favourite baritone players. Our mentors showed us all a lot of love in opportunities and education through that time, which translated into an energy for playing and hanging that inspired us to ultimately make this record. 

 

How did you first started collaborating together?

 

BC: When I first heard Saul in 2022, I knew he had this entire other side of the instrument I wanted to get around and learn about, so when we started to hang and play in big band sections, sax quartets and duos, it was too much fun.

 

Tell us more about the baritone saxophone, and some of the influences that have shaped your musicianship?

 

SD: The baritone saxophone is a unique voice in the world of jazz music. To me, it is the most versatile of the saxophones in its tonal range and ability to convey a wide variety of colours and emotions. Some of my influences from a young age include: Ronnie Cuber, Nick Brignola, Gerry Mulligan, and more, as well as players from other instrument families.

 

BC: Some people say that Mr. Sax designed the Baritone first, but Selmer in the 1950s put another half step (low A) on the bottom and made a different beast entirely. A lot of people play baritones the way Mr. Sax intended, but Saul and I play horns built the modern way. Gerry Mulligan, Hamiett Bluiett, Serge Shaloff and Leo Parker are few of my favourite baritone players from the tradition that inspire me, and the list of living baritone players who are inspiring is too long to imagine. The two largest influences on my musicianship are my high school saxophone teacher Jim Buckley and my first college teacher Mark Allen.

 

How do you approach music from both a composer standpoint and an improviser standpoint?

 

SD: From a compositional standpoint, I try to utilise different compositional styles and approaches in my writing. This tends to manifest in various limits and constraints that I will put on myself (ie, a set amount of pitches, a set harmonic structure, or set meter). Other times I will approach it more organically and just sing an idea into my voice memos to flesh it out later. Other times, I will write with a certain musical challenge in mind that I am trying to overcome. The composition then becomes a way to deal with the challenge (ie, the Coltrane changes in “Wooden Shield”). Songwriting in collaboration with others can lead to interesting results as well. Additionally, from an improvisational standpoint, I am always trying to engage with the musicians I am playing with. That collaboration and shared energy usually pushes me to play better than I would on my own.

 

BC: As a composer, my roots lead me back to the folk and indie music I grew up with, and everything is me chasing that feeling with my adult tastes and love for the music of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter etc. The process mostly is melody first and harmonising it under that, compiling ideas, formatting and filling in what is needed. Revising and editing…

 

How do you view jazz in this age, and how do you think the current world and the progresses in technology are shaping it?

 

SD: Jazz in today’s age offers a unique challenge to its practitioners. On one side, I suppose this has always been the case in music, but there is an immense amount of material to deal with and pay homage to jazz. The challenge comes with balancing that and the need to create something new, all while being true to oneself. Tricky business! As far as its place in the world goes, I do believe that we are seeing the beginnings of a resurgence of interest in the music. There are more young people than ever learning how to play jazz, and more university programs than ever before (not sure if a good or bad thing) putting out students. Not to mention, numerous online resources for learning. Hopefully we see positive momentum in interest in the music as time goes on.

 

BC: The jazz umbrella is very wide for valid reasons and people generally do not agree where it stops. My view is that it is anything inspired by the Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker generation of modernists, but if you think twice about it, that starts to become almost everything. My favourite musicians are also people who subscribe to very wide versions of this world view. I am sure one day they will split what everyone is doing up into a bunch of categories and titles, but I think we live in this age of vast variety in stylistic approach and that is pretty exciting. Technology, to my mind, has been a big shaper in the form of almost every music ever. My greatest interests in how tech shapes the modern playing field start in 1968 as a response (I think) to Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane’s timbrel approach. Two records, Plug Me In by Eddie Harris and Miles in the Sky by Miles Davis, both added electronic instruments to the band (maybe there are records earlier I am not familiar with). Since that point, the vocabulary of the synthesiser is so ingrained with how we think about sound and the great sonic backdrops rhythm sections can make today given what every niche in that area they bring in is amazing and I think its changing how people play a lot with and without the stuff. This record has no electronics on it besides for the recording tech and though you can make even more arguments for how that has changed the music over the years (jazz arguably is the sound of Van Gelder’s Neve Console and room), but if for nothing else I wrote this music at a Rhodes and that had to have made me come up with different chords then if I was playing a piano and that sort of subtle influence of music technology is throughout since the start. On many live Miles records with Herbie Hancock he would come in late into the first tune because he would be setting up a portable tape recorder under his piano to bootleg the session, maybe that space is where we got the permission to get rid of the piano entirely on this one. I think Steinberg’s Dorico has levelled up peoples engraving game in a short period of time and since the pandemic almost everyone has Ableton/Pro Tools/Logic on their systems and I know many people write with them as sketch pad so I think both of those facts gives people a lot of freedom to chase some really amazing stuff that maybe would be harder to conceptualise just you at the piano with some paper.

 

So after Downward Current what’s next?

 

SD: Now that Downward Current has been released, I have been focusing on writing for large ensembles as I have a few projects coming up. Some nonet and big band are on the horizon!

 

BC: Saul and I are going to keep playing, maybe try to make a live record? I suppose, we will see. My hope is to make a record I am thinking I will call Pennsylvania with my band Trade which has mostly been violin, banjo, acoustic guitar, upright and the baritone, but I have been writing to extend it to eight pieces. That will be a place where I will collect my thoughts about some other modern parts of the tech landscape in a deliberate way to comment more on the last question. That music is fairly political and features a collection of my video work documenting historic industrial sites I have found in my hikes. A record I produced for the band Part Time Samurai is coming out in the coming months that I am super excited for.

 

Thanks very much Saul and Bryan. A last one for the road — one book, one album, one film —, tell us about your latest cultural findings?

 

SD: I just finished reading this novella by Steven L. Peck entitled A Short Stay in Hell. It was captivating and I am still thinking about it weeks later. As far as albums go, I always seem to come back to Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool, namely Gil Evans’ beautiful writing on “Moon Dreams”. For film, I did very much enjoy Nolan’s recent take on the Odyssey, although I did miss the bag of winds!

 

BC: The book will have to be Christian Wiman’s Every Riven Thing. The poetry book that the poem “Five Houses Down” is from. That tune has actually received some changes since the recording and will likely be recorded again with Trade eventually! Wiman is just an amazing poet, deeper than I am really hip enough to understand but the stuff is beautiful sounding, looking, and if I can figure out its meaning. All the Streets Are Silent is a favourite documentary of mine that is about New York skateboarding and hip-hop culture and I think it’s a must-see for New York transplant musicians because it fills out the edges of our jazz history education in a way that makes the current landscape start to make sense if that makes sense. Sunhyun Yoo recently released a record called PLAiDE that is just amazing if you wanted to check out something new. Amazing on every level, sort of music. Deep music and enjoyable to non-jazz fanatic company.

 

Bouncing on Saul and Bryan’s words, and alternating between tradition and experimentation, composition and improvisation, they approach the baritone saxophone not simply as an instrument rooted in jazz history, but as a vehicle for collaboration, exploration and an ever-expanding musical language. Read my review of Downward Current.