Quotes About Saxophone

Whenever I open a book about jazz, I turn to the index and look for Lennie Tristano, the incredible pianist; Lee Konitz, the luminous alto sax player; and Warne Marsh, the tenor player who captured some of the most beautiful sounds in the world.

Then, of course, I played alto and tenor, wherever there were jobs.

And, man he cried when he talked. He cried big tears, the kind it takes an old man to cry, the kind it takes a saxophone to play.

My central quest was to have a piece played on the saxophone sound like more than one instrument, exploiting different registers and wide interval leaps.

My father was a jazz tenor sax player. He played in a lot of big bands. So I had that sound around me all the time. The first record that really caught my ear was Clifford Brown's 'Brownie Eyes.' I grew up listening to John Coltrane and Illinois Jacquet. This is where I come from... I love improvisational music.

When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration.

I play saxophone, I play tenor sax.

I don't know what I was trying to get out of a tenor - but it never really satisfied me until one day I picked up my alto and I said, 'Where have you been?' and I said right here for now on!

At Evensong one night, while Holly played at sax and Mrs. Bethel Utemeyer joined in, I saw him: Holiday, racing past a fluffy white Samoyed. He had lived to a ripe old age on earth and slept at my father's feet after my mother left, never wanting to let him out of his sight... I waited for him to sniff me out, anxious to know if here, on the other side, I would still be the little girl he slept beside. I did not have to wait long: he was so happy to see me, he knocked me down.

I'll learn to work the saxophoneI'll play just what I feelDrink Scotch whiskey all night longAnd die behind the wheel

I'd rather somebody punch me in the face than drop my sax.

I was focusing on sax while at Berklee, but then I started to play Brazilian choro and Colombian music. I was doing more folkloric stuff on the clarinet because it works better. Finally, I realized I was working more on the clarinet than the saxophone, and I started to feel more comfortable on it.

I'm just a former saxophone player who got lucky.

I started playing sax when I was fourteen because I'm like a real competitive person when it comes to winning girls attention. And there was this girl that I really wanted the attention of and I found out she really liked jazz.

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.

I got one of the best sax players in the business - Arno Hecht. He plays with the Uptown Horns and all the great blues bands. He expresses the heart of the Apollo Theatre, let me tell you.

As a horn player, the greatest compliment one can get is when a person comes to you and says, 'I heard this saxophone on the radio the other day and I knew it was you. I don't know the song, but I know it was you on sax.'

Bands such as LiLiPUT and Essential Logic were just as unorthodox as Gang of Four or Wire, even taking their sounds a step further with shrieking vocals and saxophone.

No sé si lo hizo adrede, pero aquélla fue la lección más importante de mi vida. La música tenía que tener el rostro de una mujer a la que enamorar. Cerraba los ojos para imaginarla, para ponerle color a su pelo y a sus ojos, pero supe que mientras sólo saliesen de mi saxo rebuznos de asno, jamás existiría esa chica.

I started as a musician. I play the saxophone, but from the age of 17, I realised that it's very hard to make a living as a jazz musician in Australia. So I went for an audition and got an acting job and, fortunately, I completely fell in love with that.

Throughout the evening I would be recording these long saxophone delays and about four hours into the concert, if I wanted to take a break I would just play back the saxophone.

I started realizing that music is the one area where I've always let go. When that saxophone goes into my mouth, I get into a space where I never think about the notes I've already played or anticipate the notes ahead.

I focused on the saxophone ever since high school. It wasn't until my album 'Poetica,' which I recorded in 2006, that I went back to the clarinet. It felt like it was waiting for me!

I was hearing music in my head and trying to play it on the clarinet, but it didn't match.' Then, literally the first day, it did with the saxophone. I was like, 'Oh man, that's what I've been trying to do; this is what it's supposed to sound like.'