OUR PLAYERS

Like many people I played an instrument at school, went up through the grades on clarinet. And although I didn't get saxophone lessons, I was given a council saxophone to borrow so I could join the school big band. I loved it, loved the sound of a group of saxes together playing blues-y chilled out stuff.

I started playing saxophone while at primary school and have now been playing for 8 years. I have been playing in bands from the age of 10 and have been in the saxophone orchestra for two years.

I taught myself to play sax in my late 20’s and I payed in local bands on and off over the years.
I chose the sax after seeing a local Indie band featuring a sax player who was a friend of a friend.
I play in the Inverurie Concert Band, the Aberdeen Concert Band and in Macswing, a swing band based in Aberdeen.

I have been playing the saxophone for around 6 or 7 years now and am receiving lessons from tutors at Aberdeenshire music centre. I first chose to play the saxophone as I had been playing the guitar and I really enjoyed music and the saxophone seemed like the coolest instrument. So when I was offered the chance I was more than keen.

When I retired in 2004 after 30 years offshore I decided to learn to play an instrument. I bought a guitar, a piano and a soprano saxophone. I was asked to come back after 2 years and took the most practical, the sax. I was allowed to practice on the helideck only, but there were complaints that I was scaring away helicopters, and the Standby vessel thought that the platform had set off an emergency stations alarm. 


For most of my 82 years I’ve been a singer. My partner, Foss, is the sax player. One day, Foss was trying to recruit members for the orchestra and also fancied treating herself to a new sax. So before I’d had time to think up a good excuse not to do it, I found myself signed up and sitting in the back row of the orchestra trying to play her old sax and make sense of the specially written starter parts. Luckily Covid came along a month later and that gave me two years with nothing better to do than learn to play well enough to join in more effectively. I’m a sailor so practicing also has to happen when I’m out on the boat in Australia.