Singular Act Makes Him a Triple Threat

Saxophonist Chang-Kyun Chong belts out the blues on the tenoraltosoprano.

If that’s a mouthful to say, try playing it.

Chong wraps his lips around three mouthpieces, spreads his arms around three horns and stretches his hands over six sets of keys to do it.

But first, he takes a deep breath. A very deep breath.

“People don’t believe it when I tell them I play three saxophones at one time,” said Chong, 53, of Los Angeles.

A Van Nuys audience certainly seemed skeptical when he stood up to play his own composition, titled “My Lord,” with the Valley College Jazz Band the other day on.

Hanging from cords around Chong’s neck were a B-flat tenor sax, an E-flat alto and a B-flat soprano saxophone.

Jazz band saxophonist Sol Feldman watched from his seat as Chong puckered up. “That’s why it’s called ‘My Lord,’ ” Feldman cracked.

Chong has played the saxophone since he was a 17-year-old living in South Korea and was captivated by a recording of “In the Mood” by Glenn Miller.

By the time Chong moved to Los Angeles in 1975 to become music director at the Korean-language World Agape Mission Church, he could play 10 instruments, ranging from the piano to the violin.

But something was still missing.

“I like the big-band sound,” Chong said. Lacking his own orchestra, he set out to duplicate one.

Playing two saxophones at once proved easy for Chong--and it produced some of the tone he was looking for. But the sound he sought was elusive until he decided to try three saxes.

“The first time I tried playing them, my mouth and gums hurt so bad I couldn’t eat food,” he said.

Blending instruments with different tones and in different keys was also difficult. It required a mental visualization of the harmonizing of the three instruments.

“I told myself I was giving up on this,” Chong said.

He stuck it out, though. And soon he was practicing with three saxophones two hours a day.

But not at the South Norton Avenue apartment he shares with his wife, singer Tammy Jung, and their four daughters.

“Three saxophones are too loud. So every day I played at Griffith Park between 7 and 9 in the morning. I went to the middle of the park in the woods, where nobody could hear me,” he said.

Honing his skill over the past three years, Chong has performed as a one-man woodwind section with various college jazz bands. His invitation to play last week at Valley College came from band director Woody James, who has known Chong for 15 years.

Chong’s lung power blew away the audience of 150.

“I thought he wouldn’t be able to do it, and he did,” said music student John Bonaduce, a junior at Valley College. “It kind of frightens me: He sent the concept of embouchure--how you hold your lips around an instrument--to the ash bin.”

Jazz band saxophonist Pete Harris was also impressed.

“He was excellent. I’ve never seen anybody play three horns,” said Harris, a big-band veteran from Northridge who has played professionally with the likes of Frank Sinatra. “Sure, what he does is a novelty. But it takes some doing.”

Trumpeter Danny Bergen said some band members rolled their eyes when James announced that a guest performer would join them to play three saxes simultaneously.

But Bergen, of Culver City, wasn’t one of them.

He once saw the late jazz musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk play a saxophone, clarinet and flute at one time. “It was 30 years ago in New York, and it was one of the most fun nights I’ve had in jazz,” Bergen said.

Director James, who has played trumpet professionally with such mainstays as the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and taught music in college for 35 years, kept one eye on the sheet music and the other on Chong as he played his three saxophones.

“I still don’t know how he did it,” James said.