‘MY MOUNTAIN TOP’ & ‘SUMMER WITH MONICA’ AUTUMN DATES
A short UK Tour takes place to mark the launch of the ‘My Mountain Top’ CD. Andy Scott, Duo partner percussionist Dave Hassell, actor Richard Ellis & photographer Gary Abbott hit the road. Please see the ‘diary’ page for details.

6th ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC SAXOPHONE DAY
This takes place on Sunday 12th November, if you’re a saxophone player please come along, everyone is very welcome! Go to the ‘diary’ page for more details.

SAXOPHONE MUSIC PUBLISHED BY ASTUTE MUSIC
Rob Buckland & Andy Scott are Editors of the Saxophone Section of Astute Music. If you teach saxophone or are taking an exam please note that seventeen pieces from the AM Saxophone Catalogue are now included on the ABRSM Saxophone Syllabus and Trinity/Guildhall Saxophone Syllabus! Quite apart from this there are some great new ensemble pieces for saxophones available from Astute. Please support a publishing company that is publishing new works. www.astute-music.com

A Note from Andy

You’ve got to be mad to run a large music group… this is true, I run SaxAssault. nine saxes and rhythm section!!

I spent most of May and June composing seven new charts for SaxAssault. Jim Fieldhouse & Rob Buckland both wrote a great chart each, so we have nine new charts featured on the ‘Surfacing for Air’ SaxAssault CD, which was recorded at DeBees in Winsford on 3rd & 4th July. Special thanks to Damon at DeBees and also to Jon Eno who promoted SaxAssault in Derby. I wanted to add some percussion into the rhythm section, so the one and only Steve Gilbert kindly came on board, and Duo partner Dave Hassell also dropped by and played on a few tracks! Guitarist Johnny Heyes funked things up on one track, whilst our special CD guest is the great Bob Mintzer!

To run a group like SaxAssault you need some help so it was good to have that on this summers SaxAssault gigs and recording from Lauren, and especially from Dave Graham who runs his music management company DG Music. www.dgmusic.co.uk. DG Music are currently organising a SaxAssault UK Tour for March 2007 that will launch the new ‘Surfacing for Air’ CD.

Straight after the CD recording SaxAssault flew to Ljubljana in Slovenia having been invited to support the Yellowjackets & the Big Band RTV Slovenia in the first ever ‘Jazz Night’ at a World Saxophone Congress. It was a great honour to be invited, the concert was televised, Bob Mintzer again guested with us, all in front of a sellout 1500 people in the beautiful Krizante Open Air Theatre.

Also performing at the 14th World Saxophone Congress in one of the prestigious evening Gala Concerts were John Harle and Rob Buckland playing my Double Saxophone Concerto ‘Dark Rain’. (Listen to Dark Rain excerpts.) John and Rob battled valiantly against the Slovenian Army Wind Band, and by this I mean that the band played VERY loudly most of the time, all this in a smallish very reverberant concert hall. The result was that at times the volume levels in that particular hall were painful! This isn’t a criticism of the band, they needed strong leadership from the conductor which unfortunately wasn’t forthcoming. This was the case in every piece in the programme that night. ‘Dark Rain’ caused extreme reactions both positive and negative, all of which is fine. I’m grateful though to John and Robs very fine playing and keeping to the spirit of the music in the very trying circumstances.

Music is subjective, you can’t please everyone all the time but rather just get on and do what you do and believe in musically. I’ve been lucky enough to meet and work with lots of very good musicians, some of whom were in Slovenia at the WSC, unfortunately I also encountered some saxophonists at the WSC who lacked any form of open mindedness outside their “musical box”. I hope I am more open-minded to other musical styles and approaches than some of the saxophonists at the congress who I felt were very limited and blinkered in accepting that there could possibly be other views on everything from repertoire to technique than their own!! If anyone has any comments or had very similar or different musical experiences in the beautiful city of Ljubljana at the World Saxophone Congress then please feel free to email me at info [at] AndyScott [dot] org [dot] uk.

Thank you to the 28 wonderful people that attended the 3rd Harrogate Saxophone Summer School in August! Some photos and comments will be posted on this site soon. Special thanks to Stuart (a great organiser and very patient man!), Andrew Woodhead, Rico & Yanagisawa (for sponsoring this event), Rob, Helen, Jen, Jim, Sarah, Joe and Joe, and special guest Snake Davis.

In July the Woldingham Saxophone Summer School was as good as ever. This course is run by Rob Buckland, and boasted a spectacular rhythm section playing through some SaxAssault charts, fixed by Elliott Henshaw (SaxAssault drummer who inspired the new chart ‘Don’t Shoot the Duck’, but that’s another story…).

Thanks for reading this and dropping by my site. Music is bigger than all of us, maybe we should all enjoy it and the challenges that it brings?!

Take care,
Andy