Jazz Saxophone & Classical Saxophone: Why The Enmity?

First and foremost, we are all saxophonists. Neither genre is better than the other in any way. That's the beauty of art in general. It is all subjective. So if I'm in the practice room studying and interpreting the beautiful harmonic and melodic structure of Claude Debussy's "Rhapsodie" for Saxophone and Orchestra, and my good friend is next door on the tenor trying figure out how he could incorporate some chromatic neighbor tones in his solo on "Autumn Leaves" to make it even more interesting, are the two of us really doing anything very different from each other? Sure the style is different, but what about the pursuit of creating music--beautiful music at that? There is no wrong or right here, but I do think it is wrong to make sweeping generalities about either style of saxophone playing, which includes making judgements about the quality of one's character. So I pose the question: Why all of this unneeded animosity between such closely linked fields of music?

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