Name a White Alto Player

[Cyril]

What about Piet Noordijk?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GZoqM9f0qc...feature=related

[AllenLowe]

doesn't qualify - too white -

[LarryCurleyMoe]

1) Mark Vinci - Sonny Stitt spoke highly of this mofo!

2) West Coaster/Avant alto - Jim Ryan of Forward energy - quite a creative caucasian!

[clifford_thornton]

Are we referring to white Americans or shall we include white Europeans, South Africans, etc.?

[AllenLowe]

they must be white, Jewish, and be between 5 foot 6 and 5 foot 9

also, they must have middle names ending in "D"

[Hot Ptah]

Has Marty Nau been mentioned?

[BruceH]

Paul Desmond is my favorite white alto player:

I hear ya!

Call me old-fashioned, but I still really dig Desmond.

But then, I also really like Art Pepper, Lee Konitz, and Lennie Niehaus. I even like Jimmy Dorsey a whole lot.

Just to show how irrelevant the race issue can be (or how ill-informed I could be) for several years I thought Jackie McLean was white. The few b&w photos I'd seen of him made him look kind of white. What can I say, this was long before you could look anybody up on Google or Wikipedia. So I guess back in that time he was one of my favorite "white" altoists.

[Tony Miller]

Vincent  Herring and Justin Chart are two of the best Be Bop and Hard Bop modern day players on the scene today.

[Peter Friedman]

After more that a decade, I just read through this entire thread. Was surprised to find quite a few alto players that were not mentioned.

Alan Barnes (British), Arne Domnerus (Swedish), Derek Humble (British), Ferdinand Povel  (Dutch, plays both alto & tenor), Sadeo Watanabe (Japan), Cory Weeds (Canadian, Plays alto & tenor)

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I never commented in this thread because I always felt it was just Allen fucking with us. I see he's managing to do it even though he's no longer posting here.

[clifford_thornton]

I wouldn't consider a Japanese musician "white."

Doubt the original intent of the thread was to fuck with us, given Allen's decades-long exploration of ethnic/cultural identity in his work.

[Rabshakeh]

He's gone quiet over at his new home on substack, recently.