He is primarily a sax player but in his music-making universe includes a variety of woodwind instruments: flutes, and clarinets. These are his own words about how music is a visceral part of who he is: “…You just can’t go through life and experience it fully with a set of blinders on. I think there’s tremendous beauty in cross-pollinations of music and influences.”
Listen to the music he makes and the emotions he portrays through the families of instruments he uses to convey his musical stories and compositional life-telling events. His phrasing lands like layered prose and he can be gentle and unassuming and then set up an improvisation flare that is awash with colours as sounds. You are on his journey as you listen to the music and then just as instantly the voyage is yours too.
If you’ve ever wondered what sentimentality or tenderness sounds like, or the feeling of going from a whisper to the thrill of registers of brilliance and pure tonality, you will find those and many other experiences in the artistry of James Carter.