When Nashville-based multi-instrumentalist Bryan Cumming takes the stage on May 1 for his debut JazzFest appearance, his vintage alto saxophone will in fact be making a homecoming visit.
Several years ago, Cumming bought the horn from Sally Weatherford, a longtime darling of the Murfreesboro theater and arts scene. The saxophone had belonged to her late husband, Don Belcher, since his teens, and Weatherford (who passed in 2018) wanted it to go to a serious and appreciative user. Weatherford, who’d met Cumming through a mutual acquaintance, knew of the versatile musician’s facility on saxophone and evidently recognized a quality in the man himself that prompted her exclusive offer to purchase the instrument.
The sentimental value of the horn wasn’t lost on Cumming, who later composed a melody inspired by Belcher’s beloved sax and his wife’s attachment to it. “After Sally sold it to me, I played it, listening to how it sounded, looking for a tune that would emerge,” Cumming said. “I took the [song’s] name ‘Bellwether Serenade’ from the company Sally and Don had formed, which combined their two names of Belcher and Weatherford.”
The sax, a fine quality Selmer brand instrument, brought the professional musician’s lengthy journey full circle. One of three horn-playing brothers raised in a musical family in Atlanta, Cumming grew up along the cusp of his father’s big-band bent and the innovative 1950s jazz floating from the Selmer saxes of premier players such as Stan Getz, John Coltrane and Paul Desmond. This premium brand was the jazzer’s standard, Cumming notes, and buying his own first Selmer—a 1953 model—nearly 50 years after picking up his first saxophone reconnected him to the streams of classic influences and family ties that had helped form his approach to, and passion for, the instrument.
Cumming draws from elements of that mid-century jazz era on the silky, slightly sultry “Bellwether Serenade,” driven by his mellifluous sax and the harmonically expansive piano work of Murfreesboro-based musician Kelli Cox. Expect to hear the composition during Cumming and his quartet’s JazzFest set scheduled for 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 1.
“Bellwether Serenade” is available to stream or purchase online at YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and other outlets.
