MYSTERY SCHOOL
David Boyce - tenor saxophone
Phillip Greenlief - tenor saxophone
David and I have known each other for four decades, but we didn't start playing together until 2006 when we began teaching at SF Waldorf High School. I realized that I had never had a duo with another tenor player. It's so good because we have a deep love for the instrument and the great practitioners that elevated it to an iconic status. Our music is an open love letter to the tenor saxophone. We have never talked about using compositions, it was just understood without ever saying anything that we would be an improvising unit.
@the luggage store gallery - photo by andreas peter bloom
Our music has a range in the way that we lead and accompany each other but also in the way that we can take independent routes to similar destinations. We employ the duo to explore the horn and its history. We have spent so many hours listening to tenor players together - that experience and the music is one singular conversation.
recording for UNSOLITARY - AN IMPROVISED MUSIC SERIES
photo by myles boisen
check out our CD release on the creative sources label
now available on my bandcamp page
cover photo by michael zelner
"A confluence of reeds from Bay Area saxophonists David Boyce and Phillip Greenlief, both performing on and professing an open love letter to the tenor saxophone, the positioning of each clear through stereo placement as they improvise seven dialogs of intent listening and tremendous technique, from high speed intertwining to introspective contemplation."
- Squidco
DAVID BOYCE BIO:
David spent his formative years in NYC soaking up the city's vast multi-cultural offerings. After being bitten by the jazz bug in elementary school he began his studies of the saxophone. Music quickly became the focus of his non academic endeavors. He graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations, taught junior high school in the Bronx and moved to San Francisco just in time for the Loma Prieta earthquake. Living in the Bay Area inspired him to pursue music as a full time obsession. He co-founded the AfroFuturist jazz trio Broun Fellinis (27 years running) and became an active free lance musician involved in many musical pursuits that include Jazz, Post Rock, HipHop, World Music , Improvised and Electronic Music. His music has taken him to Europe, Japan and Canada as well as around the US. Currently, he performs with Broun Fellinis, Black Quarterback, Shimmering Leaves, Radio Sofia, 6 Roses, and Black Edgar's Musik Box.