Saxophonist Walter Beasley is not being arrogant when he says, “I decided to control where I go and when I go, touring when I feel like it.”
If you go
Walter Beasley
Where: Blues Alley Jazz Supper Club, 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW
When: 8 and 10 p.m. Sunday
Info: $35; 202-337-4141; bluesalley.com
This tour de force musician, singer, songwriter, full-time college professor and head of his own recording company has finally learned how to lean back, relax and pace himself in the day-to-day activities associated with the many hats he wears. “I was emotionally drained at one time, but now I’ve allowed myself the power to choose,” he said.
As a result, in his appearance at Blues Alley tonight, he will give audiences the very best of himself as an artist who really desires to live in the moment.
In his first performance there in two years, Beasley will treat audiences to songs from his album “Sax Reflections,” which was released after a long and serious reflection following a low period in his life. He will also perform the music from his albums “Live in the Groove” and “For Her,” a recent release that peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Charts.
As both saxophonist and singer, Beasley is unique in a business that often raises artists to No. 1 heights only to knock them down again in ever changing polls.
“I decided in high school that I needed to do more than just play the saxophone,” Beasley remembered. “And so I fell in love with singing, with the art of delivery.”
Vocals, he realized, could work much like the truncated phrases of the saxophone, compatible with the delivery of a story. And so he pursued both at a very young age.
“I’m too old to sing and play at the same time, now,” he joked. “Now, I’ll play two or three songs, then [I’ll] put the sax down.”
Today he performs with what he calls his “band of regulars” that includes a keyboardist, drummer and bass player. In between the gigs, the man whom Branford Marsalis praised as “a successful performing musician who possesses the rare skill of understanding the musical process beyond the intuitive” teaches at his alma mater, the Berklee College of Music.
“I was only planning on staying a year or two,” Beasley said of a teaching gig that has continued for more than 20 years now. “But once I saw musicians move an audience through the use of techniques that I showed them, I was a sucker for teaching.”
