Playing Saxophone Quotes

I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.

The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out. It felt like someone had taken away my credit card and I was having to learn how to budget. You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may feel differently. Two months after that, you may want to learn to play the saxophone or devote yourself to the church. Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.

When I’m lonely I stand in the corner and play my saxophone and feel sorry for myself. I would ask you to accompany me on the piano, but if I did that I wouldn’t be lonely, would I? And what’s the point of a saxophone if not to celebrate despair?

I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.

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.

Don't play the saxophone, let the saxophone play you.

Ducks quack like a cacophony of saxophone. At least, they sound like how I play jazz. If you're looking for an elevator musician, I am FOR HIRE.

Did you even know the saxophone could make duck farm noises? You know I'm a genius jazz performer because it sounds like I haven't played an instrument ever before.

It's hard to explain what happens when jazz and punk fuse with a violin twist but it works. Probably because Anson Choi takes off his shirt while he's playing the saxophone. Whoever's not chatting up a Cadet or a girl from Darling House or playing chess with the guys is watching the band. I turn into a groupie.

I play the saxophone like a duck quacks. Tickets are ONLY $19.95. Lessons sold separately. No assembly required.

If birthdays fell from the sky like Saturdays shaped like saxophones, I’d learn how to play the flute on Tuesdays.

A lifetime's experience urges me to utter a warning cry: do anything else, take someone's golden retriever for a walk, run away with a saxophone player. Perhaps what's wrong with being a writer is that one can't even say 'good luck'--luck plays no part in the writing of a novel. No happy accidents as with the paint pot or chisel. I don't think you can say anything, really. I've always wanted to juggle and ride a unicycle, but I dare say if I ever asked the advice of an acrobat he would say, 'All you do is get on and start pedaling'.

I'm the only duck farmer I know who also plays the saxophone. Of course, I don't play it well, which is why I only perform in elevators. Also, I'm the only duck farmer I know.

My saxophone pulses out potato-sized notes, and when I play it my ducks dance like French fries in a Quebec winter. I make music for romantics and for elevators.

How much saxophone does it take to play the blues? I’m asking because I’m trying to fill up my pool using only blues, due to the fact that my ducks will only swim in sad jazz.

The Pink Panther had been playing on the old antennae TV. He remembered how the slinky, suggestive saxophone triggered something abstractly pleasurable in his child-self.

She likes playing the saxophone, Romero, not the piccolo Pete.

The skills needed to stay employable are changing daily, which is why I'm now offering a class called: "How To Sew Pants While Riding A Unicycle And Playing The Saxophone Like A Quacking Duck." What are the jobs of The Future? Nobody knows, but my class will train you to Get Hired!

I play mini-golf like I shoot pool like I swim in it. That's also how I play the trombone, which is why it makes trumpet noises. For a saxophone-free duck quacking experience, try adding more water.

I like how grocery stores play music while I'm shopping. Vintage pop really makes me want to pay full price and avoid looking for discounts. I need to implement that financial psychology here on my duck farm.

Tennis Elbow is easily curable, and here's how: Switch to playing ping-pong. Sure, the pain is still there, but now it's Ping-Pong Elbow, and that's so silly it might make you rethink your hobbies, which might turn you into a duck farmer.

Let the trees be consulted before you take any action every time you breathe in thank a tree let tree roots crack parking lots at the world bank headquarters let loggers be druids specially trained and rewarded to sacrifice trees at auspicious times let carpenters be master artisans let lumber be treasured like gold let chain saws be played like saxophones let soldiers on maneuvers plant trees give police and criminals a shovel and a thousand seedlings let businessmen carry pocketfuls of acorns let newlyweds honeymoon in the woods walk don't drive stop reading newspapers stop writing poetry squat under a tree and tell stories.

Music anchors us to a time and place, rooted with feelings, and is invisible liquid nostalgia that flows through our ears directly into our hearts (where our memories are stored). What song was playing when you first thought about stealing a duck out of a park pond?

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.

My saxophone playing And my wino career are in a slump 'Cause I find myself now living In a cardboard refrigerator box down by the Houston dump

First Artificial Intelligence stole all the jobs. Then it snatched up all the people off the streets at night, and now I'm left alone, playing my saxophone at the moon.

Play your saxophone like a quacking duck. An electric guitar full of lightning doesn't even have that energy.

I don't play the saxophone. But that's OK, because I talk to my quacking ducks, and our conversation is like music to my neighbor's six AM ears.

I thought people loved it when I played my guitar. Last time I performed Toby Keith, and everyone at the party started engaging in gay butt sex.

My ducks swim like they are water dancing. They do this because I play the saxophone like it's liquid music.

As a Juilliard student I would write music by day and by night hear John Coltrane at the Village Vanguard, Miles Davis and Art Blakey at the Café Bohemia, or Thelonious Monk trading sets with the young Ornette Coleman, who was just up from Louisiana playing his white plastic saxophone at the Five Spot at St. Marks Place and the Bowery. Years later, I got to know Ornette.

I once tried to cut down a tree using saxophone music, but it didn’t work because I was playing a flute. That’s when I started designing clothing made out of cardboard boxes and duck farming.

You should learn how to play the flute. Then you could ride in the passenger seat of my car and play instrumental versions of classic 80s pop songs while I drive around on the clock for Uber.

A zebra is the piano of the animal kingdom, and now you can learn to play like Mozart on horseback. If I can coach my ducks to become World Dodgeball Champions, I can make your musical equestrian dreams a reality.

Here is a historical fact that somehow gets overlooked, and might seem controversial, but it just simply is true: The Beastie Boys should only be listened to by deaf people. Any other time it plays over speakers, it should be considered torture and an act of war. Even ducks, the songbirds of the feathered swimmers, hate The Beastie Boys, and consider them to be The Three Stooges of the musical world, with all of the vocal talent of Gilbert Gottfried.

She was my sister, beloved, who had stayed in my room around the clock when I’d been eight and suffered with a case of the flu that nearly killed me. She was my sister, whose clarinet playing inspired me to find the music in me, to settle on the saxophone, which had fast become the key to my identity. I loved her as I loved no one else, as no others had allowed me to love them, and if I were to kill her under the influence of some malign spirit, I might as well then kill myself.

A saxophone someplace far off played / As she was walkin' by the arcade / As the light burst through a beat-up shade where he was wakin' up / She dropped a coin into the cup of a blind man at the gate / And forgot about a simple twist of fate

A saxophone someplace far off played / As she was walkin' on by the arcade / As the light burst through a beat-up shade where he was wakin' up / She dropped a coin into the cup of a blind man at the gate / And forgot about a simple twist of fate

Pickleball IS life. In fact, the game should replace fiat currency as a facilitator of trade. If you want to sell something tangible like a duck, why price it in dollars? Just haggle over units of pickleball play equal in value to a swimming bird.

Someday I’d like to go to Atlantic City with you not to gamble (just being there with you is enough of a gamble) but to ride the high white breakers have a Manhattan and listen to a baritone saxophone play a tune called “Salsa Eyes” with you beside me on a banquette but why stop there let’s go to Paris in November when it’s raining and we read the Tribune at La Rotonde our hotel room has a big bathtub I knew you’d like that and we can be a couple of unknown Americans what are we waiting for let’s go

I believe medieval cathedrals are not just overly ornate buildings with intricate designs to please the eyes. I believe they are giant dormant sound machines, and if you were to find the On Button on one, it would probably start playing Celine Dion's greatest hits.

I am king over my ducks. What does that mean? That means they get to eat and drink and play, and give no thought to where their food and water comes from, and I have to deliver both regularly, while also worrying about protecting them and keeping them absolutely safe.

How to choose an orchard plant from the nursery: Bring a stereo, play some Mozart, and whichever one dances the liveliest, that's the one you take back home to meet your ducks. You could play Beethoven, but he was deaf, so his music is a little too Helen Kelleresque for my taste.

I’d say, ‘Trane, man, why are you doing that, beating on your chest and howling in the microphone?’” Ali remembered in an interview. “He’d say, ‘Man, I can’t find nothing else to play on the horn.’ He exhausted the saxophone. He couldn’t find nothing else to play … he ran out of horn.

You say you know these streets pretty well? The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone. It saw you steeling yourself for the job interview, slowly walking home after the late date, tripping over nonexistent impediments on the sidewalk. It saw you wince when the single frigid drop fell from the air-conditioner 12 stories up and zapped you. It saw the bewilderment on your face as you stepped out of the stolen matinee, incredulous that there was still daylight after such a long movie. It saw you half-running up the street after you got the keys to your first apartment. It saw all that. Remembers too. Consider what all your old apartments would say if they got together to swap stories. They could piece together the starts and finishes of your relationships, complain about your wardrobe and musical tastes, gossip about who you are after midnight. 7J says, ''So that's what happened to Lucy; I knew it would never work out.'' You picked up yoga, you put down yoga, you tried various cures. You tried on selves and got rid of them, and this makes your old rooms wistful: why must things change? 3R says: ''Saxophone, you say? I knew him when he played guitar.'' Cherish your old apartments and pause for a moment when you pass them. Pay tribute, for they are the caretakers of your reinventions.

What do you want to hear?" Bryce asked, opening her music library. Nesta and Azriel swapped glances, and the male answered a bit sheepishly, "The music you played at your pleasure halls." Bryce laughed, "Are you a club rat, Azriel?" He glowered at her, earning a smirk from Nesta, but Bryce played one of her dance tunes - a zippy blend of thumping bass and saxophones. And as the three of them walked into the endless dark, she could have sworn she caught Azriel nodding along to the beat.

The conversation swings from the brothers Bush to the war in Iraq to the emerging rights of Muslim women to postfeminism to current cinema—Mexican, American, European (Giorgio goes spasmodically mad over Bu-ñuel), and back to Mexican again—to the relative superiority of shrimp over any other kind of taco to the excellence of Ana’s paella, to Ana’s childhood, then to Jimena’s, to the changing role of motherhood in a postindustrial world, to sculpture, then painting, then poetry, then baseball, then Jimena’s inexplicable (to Pablo) fondness for American football (she’s a Dallas Cowboys fan) over real (to Pablo) fútbol, to his admittedly adolescent passion for the game, to the trials of adolescence itself and revelations over the loss of virginity and why we refer to it as a loss and now Óscar and Tomás, arms over each other’s shoulders, are chanting poetry and then Giorgio picks up a guitar and starts to play and this is the Juárez that Pablo loves, this is the city of his soul—the poetry, the passionate discussions (Ana makes her counterpoints jabbing her cigarette like a foil; Jimena’s words flow like a gentle wave across beach sand, washing away the words before; Giorgio trills a jazz saxophone while Pablo plays bass—they are a jazz combo of argument), the ideas flowing with the wine and beer, the lilting music in a black night, this is the gentle heartbeat of the Mexico that he adores, the laughter, the subtle perfume of desert flowers that grow in alleys alongside garbage, and now everyone is singing— México, está muy contento, Dando gracias a millares… —and this is his life—this is his city, these are his friends, his beloved friends, these people, and if this is all that there is or will be, it is enough for him, his world, his life, his city, his people, his sad beautiful Juárez… —empezaré de Durango, Torreón y Ciudad de

Dance with me', he says. There is a longing in his voice, and loss, and she thinks, perhaps, it is the end, of this, of them. A game finally played out. A war with no winners. And so she agrees to dance. There is no music, but it does not matter. When she takes his hand, she hears the melody, soft and soothing in her head. Not a song, exactly, but the sound of the woods in summer, the steady hush of the wind through the fields. And as he pulls her close, she hears a violin, low and mournful, along the Seine. His hand slides through hers, and there is the steady murmur of the seaside. The symphony soaring through Munich. Addie leans her head against his shoulder, and hears the rain falling in Villon, the brass band ringing in an L.A. lounge, and the ripple of a saxophone thorugh the open windows on Bourbon.

After a few sips, he picked up his sax and started jamming with the storm. Most days, Rivers meditated twice, when he awoke and again in the evening before writing or reading. But he still found a special relaxation and renewal in solitary playing. Contemplation through music was different from other reflective experiences, in part, because his visual associations were set free to mutate, morph, and meander; while the other senses were occupied in fierce concentraction on breathing, blowing, fingering, and listening. Within the flow of this activity, his awareness would land in different states of consciousness, different phases of time, and easily moved between revisualization of experience and its creation. The playing dislodged hidden feelings, primed him for recognizing the habitually denied, sheathed the sword of lnaguage, and loosened the shield and armor of his character. His contemplative playing purged him of worrisome realities, smelted off from his center the dross of eperience, and on those rare and cherished days, left only the refinement of flickering fire. Although he was more aware of his emotions, the music and dance of thought kept them at arm’s length, Wordsworth’s “emotion recollected in tranquility.” . . . As he played, his mind’s eye became the fisher’s bobber, guided by a line of sound around the driftwood of thought, the residue of his life, which materialized from nowhere and sank back into nothingness without his weaving them into any insistent pattern of order and understanding. He was momentarily freed of logical sequencing, the press of premises, the psycho-logic of primary process, the throb of Thought pulsing in and through him, and in billions of mind/bodies, now and throughout time, belonging each to each, to none, to no one, to Everyone, rocking back and forward in an ebb and flow of wishes, fears, and goals. He fished free of desire, illusion, or multiplicity; distant from the hook, the fisher, the fish; but tethered still on the long line of music, until it snagged on an immovable object, some unquestioned assumption, or perhaps a stray consummation, a catch in the flow of creation and wonder.

We got into the car. It was my first time. The car was spotless and I liked its smell, the smell of old leather and old steel. When, two minutes later, we reached my building, I began to feel sorry for him but didn't know what to say or how to help. I was too shy to ask him to open up and tell me about the cloud that had cast such a gloomy shadow over him. Instead I suggested something so flatfooted that I'm surprised it did not irritate him even more than he was already. I told him to head home and sleep the whole thing off, as if sleep could free a castaway from his island. No, he needed to work, he replied. Besides, her was looking forward to driving at night. He loved cruising Boston by night. He loved jazz, old jazz, Gene Ammons — especially played en sardine, with the volume really low — as the tenor sax invariably blocked all bad feelings and made him think of romance and of sultry summer nights where a woman dances cheek to cheek with you to the saxophone's prolonged lyrical strains that made you want love even after you'd stopped trusting love exists on this planet.

Simple Twist Of Fate" They sat together in the park As the evening sky grew dark She looked at him and he felt a spark tingle to his bones It was then he felt alone and wished that he'd gone straight And watched out for a simple twist of fate. They walked alone by the old canal A little confused I remember well And stopped into a strange hotel with a neon burning bright He felt the heat of the night hit him like a freight train Moving with a simple twist of fate. A saxophone someplace far off played As she was walking on by the arcade As the light bust through a-beat-up shade where he was waking up She dropped a coin into the cup of a blind man at the gate And forgot about a simple twist of fate. He woke up the room was bare He didn't see her anywhere He told himself he didn't care pushed the window open wide Felt an emptiness inside to which he just could not relate Brought on by a simple twist of fate. He hears the ticking of the clocks And walks along with a parrot that talks Hunts her down by the waterfront docks where the sailers all come in Maybe she'll pick him out again how long must he wait One more time for a simple twist of fate. People tell me it's a sin To know and feel too much within I still believe she was my twin but I lost the ring She was born in spring but I was born too late Blame it on a simple twist of fate. Bob Dylan, Blood On The Tracks (1975)

Inside McClintic Sphere was swinging his ass off. His skin was hard, as if it were part of the skull: every vein and whisker on that head stood out sharp and clear under the green baby spot: you could see the twin lines running down from either side of his lower lip, etched in by the force of his embouchure, looking like extensions of his mustache. He blew a hand-carved ivory alto saxophone with a 4 ½ reed and the sound was like nothing any of them had heard before. The usual divisions prevailed: collegians did not dig, and left after an average of 1 ½ sets. Personnel from other groups, either with a night off or taking a long break from somewhere crosstown or uptown, listened hard, trying to dig. 'I am still thinking,’ they would say if you asked. People at the bar all looked as if they did dig in the sense of understand, approve of, empathize with: but this was probably only because people who prefer to stand at the bar have, universally, an inscrutable look… …The group on the stand had no piano: it was bass, drums, McClintic and a boy he had found in the Ozarks who blew a natural horn in F. The drummer was a group man who avoided pyrotechnics, which may have irritated the college crowd. The bass was small and evil-looking and his eyes were yellow with pinpoints in the center. He talked to his instrument. It was taller than he was and didn’t seem to be listening. Horn and alto together favored sixths and minor fourths and when this happened it was like a knife fight or tug of war: the sound was consonant but as if cross-purposes were in the air. The solos of McClintic Sphere were something else. There were people around, mostly those who wrote for Downbeat magazine or the liners of LP records, who seemed to feel he played disregarding chord changes completely. They talked a great deal about soul and the anti-intellectual and the rising rhythms of African nationalism. It was a new conception, they said, and some of them said: Bird Lives. Since the soul of Charlie Parker had dissolved away into a hostile March wind nearly a year before, a great deal of nonsense had been spoken and written about him. Much more was to come, some is still being written today. He was the greatest alto on the postwar scene and when he left it some curious negative will–a reluctance and refusal to believe in the final, cold fact–possessed the lunatic fringe to scrawl in every subway station, on sidewalks, in pissoirs, the denial: Bird Lives. So that among the people in the V-Note that night were, at a conservative estimate, a dreamy 10 per cent who had not got the word, and saw in McClintic Sphere a kind of reincarnation.

A blanket could be used like a trumpet could be used as a murder weapon. And if the cops ask you what I was doing on the night of June 6th, tell them I was in the corner, playing the saxophone like it was a piano. 


He was hired at WOR in March 1925 and a few months later was asked to fill in for Bernarr MacFadden, who had a calisthentics program. Gambling’s smooth baritone voice contrasted well with MacFadden’s gravelly, authoritarian approach, and he got the job permanently when MacFadden left the station a few months later. The original show was 90 minutes long, beginning at 6:30 A.M. Colgate Toothpaste became a sponsor soon after Gambling took over, and in 1927 he interspersed some husband-wife chatter. He missed being the first such breakfast show only by the fact that he was not married to the actress who played his opposite. The skits were scripted, thus fictitious. In the late 1920s he was joined by Vincent Sorey’s three-piece band. Later his permanent musicians were Sorey on violin, Michael Rosco (“Rudolph” on the air) on piano, Pietra “Froz” Frosini on accordion, and Louis Biamonte on saxophone and other instruments. The physical fitness craze ended in the mid-1930s; Gambling then concentrated on talk.

Kadri was one of the first to introduce the Western saxophone to Carnatic music. It took him nearly twenty years to really master that very complex instrument and finally do so. The man claims that when he met AR, he played him some thirty different Carnatic melodies on his saxophone.1 But AR wasn’t satisfied with any of them. Finally, Kadri played a melody known as Kalyanavasantham, a derived scale which did not possess all seven notes in the ascending scale, and AR exclaimed, ‘That’s it!

Joy Harjo, who’s a Creek Indian poet and a jazz musician, was once asked by a white reporter why she played the saxophone, since it’s not an Indian instrument. And she said: “It is when I play it.” If “I’m in the reservation of my mind” is the question, then “It is when I play it” is the answer. It’s an internal condition, and we spend too much time defining ourselves by the external. There is always this implication that in order to be Indian you must be from the reservation. It’s not true and it’s a notion that limits us—it forces us to define our entire life experiences in terms of how they do or do not relate to the reservation.

They were the younger guys playing at the end of the Swing Era, just playing their version of it. It became known as bebop, which sounds esoteric, but it was really just an offshoot of swing music.” That offshoot, however, almost instantly changed jazz music’s identity, advancing it from a danceable idiom played with the audience’s casual listening pleasure in mind to a more personal and cerebral modern music.

And where jazz music was concerned, there was a saying, Segodnia on igraet dzhaz, a zavtra rodinu prodast: Today you play jazz, tomorrow you betray the motherland.” Igor,

A memory of her father flitted through her consciousness. The time he played a slow, melodic tune on the saxophone in the misty rain of the yard on a summer’s night, surrounded by the patio’s twinkling lights. She remembered peering out the window and feeling like she was catching a glimpse of another world. One that was timeless and majestic. She touched his saxophone after that as if she were touching the hand of God, wishing to hold onto that feeling forever.

Let the trees be consulted before you take any action every time you breathe in thank a tree let treeroots crack parking lots at the world bank headquarters let loggers be druids specially trained and rewarded to sacrifice trees at auspicious times let carpenters be master artisans let lumber be treasured like gold let chainsaws be played like saxophones let soldiers on maneuvers plant trees give police and criminals a shovel and a thousand seedlings let businessmen carry pocketfuls of acorns let newlyweds honeymoon in the woods walk don’t drive stop reading newspapers stop writing poetry squat under a tree and tell stories JOHN WRIGHT

Brian Wells recalls, during a day spent with Nick in his bedroom at Far Leys, picking up a guitar and starting to play. Recognizing the riff, Nick took up his saxophone, and for a while the two jammed away on Henry Mancini’s familiar, throbbing ‘Peter Gunn’ theme. ‘I think he was a sensitive guy,’ Brian says. ‘After he’d been in the psychiatric hospital… I was talking about Bryter Layter, and getting him to play it, and talking about tracks on it, because he would show me tunings. This is when he had gone back to Tanworth … and I would go up there just to hang out and have a laugh. And then we’d play tracks off Pink Moon, and I remember saying, God, if I’d made that record and it hadn’t sold, I’d have been very pissed off. And he said: “Well, now you know what’s going on with me.” He actually said that. Which was rare for him, because normally he was very unforthcoming

Music was coming from a balcony at Frenchmen and Chartres, someone playing a saxophone. And then a voice. “This is Radio Marigny reporting from Atlantis. The bitch Katrina blew through Monday and now we're sunk. Also fucked. But we're dry in the Marigny and the Quarter! Everywhere else is underwater. The water’s still rising, folks—where it stops, nobody knows.

I woke late on Friday. I had decided to stay on at the Funky Biscuit and see Buzz Weeks play. And play he did. He renewed my desire to learn how to play the saxophone. It never ceased to amaze how the professionals could make the near impossible look like shelling peas. As

While she was dressing he listened to the sound of a recording coming from the lounge. Other recordings had been playing before, but he hadn’t heard them. It was a saxophone solo by Lester Young. He didn’t recognize the tune, but it had the “Pres” treatment. His stomach tightened. It was like listening to someone laughing their way toward death. It was laughter dripping wet with tears. Colored people’s laughter.

There are always little girls around rock groups - the same little girls who used to hang around saxophone players, girls who live on the celebrity and power and sex a band projects when it plays - and there are three of them out here this afternoon in Sausalito where the Grateful Dead rehearse. They are all pretty and two of them have baby fat and one of them dances by herself with her eyes closed.

We played like a dead French kiss reincarnated as a saxophone with tendencies to hiss galaxophonic secrets through the tombs of trombones reborn as the lower bones of Bojangles, dancing on base drums prancing like songs of the railroad set free, we played like freedom, stirring on those hills reflected in the back heels of a dancer in New Orleans tapping prosperity

I was going to ask if you wanted to dance.” “Y-you want to dance?” she stammered as the saxophone played a sultry note that seemed to raise the temperature by about two hundred degrees. “Yes. It’s the strange custom that cultures all over the world take part in.” He tried to keep his voice light to mask the adrenaline pumping through his veins.

Despite the other men and women in the crowded room, Nate felt as if Adam played for him. Only for him. Blood pounded through his veins, his cock drawing tight beneath the unforgiving denim of the faded jeans he wore. It was the same every time Adam played his saxophone or sang in that smoky voice of his. Intense arousal surged through Nate’s mind along with confusion. How could one man make him feel this way? So lost. So incredibly aroused. So damn needy.

As we passed a bloke playing a saxophone underneath one of the arches, he put down the sax and started doing a juggling thing with his hands. It was a bit peculiar, though, because, as I said to Jas, “He hasn’t got any balls.

but she could let her know that she understood, that she was sorry, that she knew what it felt like to worry about your Mom. One thing Liz could do uniquely and with pride was play her saxophone. Liz had been thinking about a musical accompaniment for Life in a Jar and had come upon the perfect song – Eugene Bozza’s Aria, a saxophone solo in a minor key that gave dignity to suffering. After all was said and done, after all the raging, all the sorrow, all the counseling, the one thing Liz wanted for Megan, for herself – maybe what everyone wanted and needed – was dignity in their suffering. To

Around now we started to gather musicians to play on tracks, the so-called supersidemen, some of whom are still around. Nicky Hopkins had been there almost since the beginning; Ry Cooder had come and almost gone. On Sticky Fingers we linked up again with Bobby Keys, the great Texan saxophone player, and his partner Jim Price.

You’ve always got something ringing against the note or the harmony. Chuck Berry is all double-string stuff. He very rarely plays single notes. The reason that cats started to play like that, T-Bone and so on, was economics—to eliminate the need for a horn section. With an amplified electric guitar, you could play two harmony notes and you could basically save money on two saxophones and a trumpet. And my double-string playing was why, in the very first Sidcup days, I was looked on as a bit of a wild rock and roller, and not really a serious blues player. Everybody else was playing away on single strings. It worked for me because I was playing a lot by myself, so two strings were better than one. And it had the possibility of getting this dissonance and this rhythm thing going, which you can’t do picking away on one string. It’s finding the moves. Chords are something to look for. There’s always the Lost Chord. Nobody’s found it.

A meeting was held with everybody, including Syd, at Peter’s house in early March. Peter says, ‘We fought to keep Syd in. I didn’t really know David, although I knew he was a talented guitarist and a very good mimic. He could play Syd guitar better than Syd.’ However, Peter and Andrew conceded, and after only the odd outbreak of recriminations, the partnership was dissolved. Syd’s suggestion for resolving any problems, by the way, was to add two girl saxophone players to the line-up. We agreed to Blackhill’s entitlement in perpetuity to all our past activities. The three of us continued as Pink Floyd and Syd left the band. Peter and Andrew clearly felt that Syd was the creative centre of the band, a reasonable point of view given our track record up until that point. Consequently, they decided to represent him rather than us. ‘Peter and I deserved to lose Pink Floyd,’ says Andrew. ‘We hadn’t done a good job, especially in the US. We hadn’t been aggressive enough with the record companies.’ Andrew thinks that none of us – David apart – came out of this phase with flying colours. And he makes the point that the decision to part company was definitely a shock to Syd, because he had never considered the rest of us (as others might have) to be effectively his backing band – ‘he was devoted to the band.

Clinton mastered the art of sending mixed cultural messages," Michelle Alexander would later write of the 1992 campaign. He could dog-whistle to angry whites from Stone Mountain one day, and the next walk into a black church and belt out "Lift Every Voice and Sing" by heart, or slide on some Wayfarers and play the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show. "It seems silly in retrospect," Alexander wrote, "but many of us fell for that." Clinton was, by any measure, an abnormally gifted politician. "Where I come from we know about race-baiting," he said when formally announcing his candidacy in Little Rock. "They've used it to divide us for years. I know this tactic well and I'm not going to let them get away with it.

When Adolfe Sax patented the first saxophone on June 23, 1846, the Creek Nation was in turmoil. The people had been moved west of the Mississippi River after the Creek Wars which culminated in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. We were putting our lives back together in new lands where we were promised we would be left alone. The saxophone made it across the big waters and was introduced in brass bands in the South. The music followed rivers into new towns, cities, all the way to our new lands. Not long after, in the early 1900s, my grandmother Naomi Harjo learned to play saxophone. I can feel her now when I play the instrument we both loved and love. The saxophone is so human. Its tendency is to be rowdy, edgy, talk too loud, bump into people, say the wrong words at the wrong time, but then, you take a breath all the way from the center of the earth and blow. All that heartache is forgiven. All that love we humans carry makes a sweet, deep sound and we fly a little.

In melodies of longing, my heart does play, A saxophonist's soul, in love's ballet. Our meetings planned, yet fate intervenes, A cosmic dance, behind the scenes. His saxophone whispers in the midnight air, Each note a promise, a love affair. Yet life's interruptions, a relentless rhyme, But through the strains, love stands the test of time. In dreams, I see his star ascending high, Prosperity blooms beneath the sky. His saxophone weaves dreams untold, A symphony of success, a story to unfold. I yearn for his pain to gently sway, In the cadence of a brighter day. For within my love, a healing balm, To soothe his soul, bring tranquil calm. As dreams align, and stars align, May his saxophone play a melody divine. In the crescendo of life, may joy take flight, And love's song serenade the darkest night.

(So much laughter, concealed by blood and faith; Life is a saxophone played by death.) Greedy to please, we learned to cry; Hungry to live, we learned to die. The heart is a sad musician, Forever playing the blues.

night and I think she was almost as excited as we were. It had also been arranged for the school concert band to play. This was the regular choice for grad and I guessed their traditional style along with all the saxophones, trumpets and flutes was the kind that usually performed at school ceremonies. But much to our surprise, Mrs. Harding didn’t want our graduation to be completely traditional. And added to that, she also wanted to display some of the talents in the graduating grade. I really appreciated her for saying that. It was so awesome she felt that way, particularly as she was the school principal.

I had decided to delight the audience by playing my soprano saxophone for their delectation (years later, a music critic would describe my playing at a concert as “excruciating”).

Physical Attributes Are there physical attributes that make one person more successful at playing the saxophone than another? In a word, no. A fuller bottom lip may need to be tucked farther over the bottom teeth, and an underbite or overbite will require some adjustment of the top teeth on the mouthpiece, but I have never felt a student was further ahead or behind based upon physical attributes. . . .

Is It Easy to Play? Weeelll. Yes. And No. It is easy to produce a sound on a saxophone. That is part of its popularity. Seldom does a student not produce a sound in the first lesson. . . . And therein lies part of the challenge for the saxophone. It plays too easily. . . . The saxophone will respond to a wimpy puff of air—and will sound like it. Developing a good tone means developing a good ear that demands the necessary air speed to create that sound. . . .

you; the most important thing is to be disciplined in completing each cycle. ▪ Start your work session with a ritual you enjoy and end it with a reward. ▪ Train your mind to return to the present when you find yourself getting distracted. Practice mindfulness or another form of meditation, go for a walk or a swim—whatever will help you get centered again. ▪ Work in a space where you will not be distracted. If you can’t do this at home, go to a library, a café, or, if your task involves playing the saxophone, a music studio. If you find that your surroundings continue to distract you, keep looking until you find the right place. ▪ Divide each activity into groups of related tasks, and assign each group its own place and time. For example, if you’re writing a magazine article, you could do research and take notes at home in the morning, write in the library in the afternoon, and edit on the couch at night. ▪ Bundle routine tasks—such as sending out invoices, making phone calls, and so on—and do them all at once.

It is impossible to achieve an artistic performance merely by generating a sound and manipulating the keys of a mechanical device. All of us have listened to mechanically produced music which was correct in all its technical aspects but which became monotonous after a short time because of the lack of emotional or human content. Singing, whether it be poor or great, is at least one hundred percent human.

Jade Bay, the future site of Wilhelmshaven, is a huge semi-circle of land on the North Sea which, just to look at for a few moments from a blustery esplanade, would make most people lose the will to live, particularly once they have had to get there by walking through a haggard shopping centre featuring a man in Bavarian dress playing 'The Shiek of Araby' on his saxophone.

had a husband once. He played the saxophone.” “Oh, dear. So we may assume that didn’t last?

Brian Wecht was born in New Jersey to an interfaith couple. His father ran an army-navy store and enjoyed going to Vegas to see Elvis and Sinatra. Brian loved school, especially math and science, but also loved jazz saxophone and piano. “A large part of my identity came from being a fat kid who was bullied through most of my childhood,” he said. “I remember just not having many friends.” Brian double majored in math and music and chose graduate school in jazz composition. But when his girlfriend moved to San Diego, he quit and enrolled in a theoretical physics program at UC San Diego. Six months later the relationship failed; six years later he earned a PhD. When he solved a longstanding open problem in string theory (“the exact superconformal R-symmetry of any 4d SCFT”), Brian became an international star and earned fellowships at MIT, Harvard, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He secured an unimaginable job: a lifetime professorship in particle physics in London. He was set. Except. Brian never lost his interest in music. He met his wife while playing for an improv troupe. He started a comedic band with his friend Dan called Ninja Sex Party. “I was always afraid it was going to bite me in the ass during faculty interviews because I dressed up like a ninja and sang about dicks and boning.” By the time Brian got to London, the band’s videos were viral sensations. He cried on the phone with Dan: Should they try to turn their side gig into a living? Brian and his wife had a daughter by this point. The choice seemed absurd. “You can’t quit,” his physics adviser said. “You’re the only one of my students who got a job.” His wife was supportive but said she couldn’t decide for him. If I take the leap and it fails, he thought, I may be fucking up my entire future for this weird YouTube career. He also thought, If I don’t jump, I’ll look back when I’m seventy and say, “Fuck, I should have tried.” Finally, he decided: “I’d rather live with fear and failure than safety and regret.” Brian and his family moved to Los Angeles. When the band’s next album was released, Ninja Sex Party was featured on Conan, profiled in the Washington Post, and reached the top twenty-five on the Billboard charts. They went on a sold-out tour across the country, including the Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas.

I saw this special once. Penguins mate for life. They may not find their specific bird for a while, but when they do, they don’t see any other birds. It’s like this one singular, specific one is the only one they want. And if their mate dies, they are destined to be forever alone. Staring off into the distance while saxophones play in the background.

Start your work session with a ritual you enjoy and end it with a reward. ▪ Train your mind to return to the present when you find yourself getting distracted. Practice mindfulness or another form of meditation, go for a walk or a swim—whatever will help you get centered again. ▪ Work in a space where you will not be distracted. If you can’t do this at home, go to a library, a café, or, if your task involves playing the saxophone, a music studio. If you find that your surroundings continue to distract you, keep looking until you find the right place.

She asked me if I would visit the music class sometime and speak to the kids about the viability of a music career. A few months later I found myself there in that same music room, talking to the kids and jamming out for them. The kids were beautiful, the jamming and talking was cool, but I walked away from the experience shaken. The last time I had been in that room was twenty years before, and it had been packed full of kids playing French horns, clarinets, violins, basses, trombones, flutes, tympani, and saxophones, all under the capable instruction of orchestra teacher Mr. Brodsky. It was a room alive with sound and learning! Any instrument a kid wanted to play was there to be learned and loved. But on this day, there were no instruments, no rustling of sheet music, no trumpet spit muddying the floor, no ungodly cacophony of squeaks and wails driving Mr. Brodsky up a fucking wall. There was a volunteer teacher, a group of interested kids, and a boom box. A music appreciation class. All the arts funding had been cut the year after I left Fairfax, under the auspices of a ridiculous law called Proposition 13, a symptom of the Reaganomics trickle-down theory. I was shocked to realize that these kids didn’t get an opportunity to study an instrument and blow in an orchestra. I thought back to the dazed days when I would show up to school after one of Walter’s violent episodes, and the peace I found blowing my horn in the sanctuary of that room. I thought of the dreams Tree and I shared there of being professional musicians, before going over to his house to be inspired by the great jazzers. Because I loved playing in the orchestra I’d be there instead of out doing dumb petty crimes. I constantly ditched school, but the one thing that kept me showing up was music class. FUCK REAGANOMICS. Man, kids have different types of intelligences, some arts, some athletics, some academics, but all deserve to be nurtured, all deserve a chance to shine their light.

The one thing I don't glean any information about is her husband, so I let my imagination go to town. I imagine he's called Hugo, works at an art college and specialises in multimedia (whatever that is). At the weekend he plays football and squash and is currently in training for the London Marathon. In addition to this he plays the saxophone, is younger than me, and permanently smells of cinnamon. Make no mistake, Hugo is a right tosser.

The one think i don't glean any information about is her husband, so I let my imagination go to town. I imagine he's called Hugo, works at an art college and specialises in multimedia (whatever that is). At the weekend he plays football and squash and is currently in training for the London Marathon. In addition to this he plays the saxophone, is younger than me, and permanently smells of cinnamon. Make no mistake, Hugo is a right tosser.

JULY 20. I've just walked into the opera house. I have no programme. Strange new players are premiering a piece by a flamboyant new composer. Front and centre, three, maybe four, whales begin — a swelling string section — discordant, irresolute harmonies fill the concert hall. Then two more whales, stage right, come in, playing eight octave clarinets, counterpointing the string section. And then they, too, are counterpointed by occasional glissando slurs and passages played pizzicato by whales at the rear of the stage. But suddenly, a programme change: The orchestra members switch clothes and pull new instruments from their cases. The French horn players begin wailing on shiny, sleazy saxophones. The trumpeters spit rapid-fire bursts into an underwater echo chamber — the deep, rocky corridor of Johnstone Strait.