When I did my master’s in jazz composition with Andy, he recognized where I was at in my development and gave me lots of space to work out my ideas. He would often challenge the results, which proved to be very helpful in clarifying and specifying what I wanted to achieve in a given composition. Andy has been very supportive also after my studies with him and remains a world-class improvisor with an unrelenting commitment to Melody – someone to look to for inspiration and great music!
I would like to express my sincere thanks to Andy Middleton, whose tireless dedication and commitment have played an important role in shaping my artistic and educational journey. I am especially grateful for his exceptional mentorship, his profound guidance and his ability to instill in me a passion for theoretical and artistic pursuits. I am very fortunate to have had him as a mentor, and I will always cherish the knowledge and skills he imparted to me.
Andy Middleton is not only a top-notch saxophonist and composer, but also a dedicated teacher. He is one of those teachers who encourage their students to pursue their own vision of music, while helping them to be sensitive to the rich tradition of (jazz) music and to learn its importance. In my time as a saxophone and composition student of Andy Middleton, I have been able to learn what I want and what I don't want as a musician.
Andy's teaching style is unparalleled - his warmth, energy, and boundless creativity make each lesson a truly enriching experience. He has an uncanny ability to find fresh perspectives on the subject at hand, ensuring continuous growth as a musician and fostering a deep connection with your musical purpose.
Beyond just being a teacher, Andy is driven by an authentic passion for bringing out the best in each of his students. This creates a powerful bond that often blossoms into lifelong friendships centered around sharing and mutual inspiration.Whatever you seek in a mentor, you'll find it and so much more with Andy. His dedication and commitment to his students' success are unmatched, making him a truly exceptional educator.
Supporting the pursuit of artistry in one’s students is, to me, the highest calling to which I can aspire as a teacher. The steps leading to artistry must include not only a technical mastery of one’s instrument, but a musicality developed through the experience of integrating the body and the intellect within a creative musical awareness. I see my role as a teacher not only to support, guide and instruct the student in developing strong and deeply rooted instrumental and musical skills, but also to lead the student to integrate for themselves the over-arching group of musical instincts that make up this creative awareness. The weaving together of the intellect, the body and the creative awareness to create a whole musician is a necessary process for all musicians, whether a student ultimately becomes an improviser or an interpreter and regardless of idiom, style or genre.
I feel that it is important to view oneself as a musician first, and as a performer of a particular instrument second. In this way we best recognize the saxophone (or any instrument) as the tool through which we manifest our musical personality in the world. Our musicality, our musical instincts and the reactions that we have in any musical context stem from our self-awareness and creativity as musicians. It is the physical relationship that we establish with our instrument and our technical proficiency upon it that determine the way that we are able to bring to life these musical instincts in order to interact in musical situations.
Proper practicing leads directly to the ability to manifest intuitively, creatively, accurately and with excellent tone and rhythmic feel all of the musical elements that your practicing integrates. My teaching begins with this goal – to develop practice habits and a strong musical self-awareness that leads the student on the way to finding his or her artistic self. I teach saxophone with a creative intuition that is grounded in the awareness of technical issues related to either the body-muscle-memory (how a minor 9 arpeggio “feels” in the hands/mouth/body), the intellectual knowledge of a particular musical element (minor 9 chord and its relationship to the Dorian mode, etc.) or the presence or lack of an awareness and “hearing” of intervals, chords, formal elements, and tonal and expressive elements.
To help visualize how our different aspects as musicians interact, I have developed the idea of a triangle with Body-Muscle-Memory in the lower right corner, Intellect in the lower left corner, and our Creative Intuition and “Ear” at the apex.
* As our body plays music, our creativity hears and guides while our intellect informs, monitors and evaluates.
My teaching supports the development of each corner of this Triangle and the awareness of the flow between corners as we improvise, read music, perform in a band, etc. A proper practice regime establishes this flow: Technical exercises like scales, arpeggios and intervallic studies are played so that, as the intellect guides the movements of the body (fingers, hands, mouth, tongue, throat, arms and legs) the ear hears and learns the sound produced as the body learns the exact sequence of movements that equals (or produces) the specific musical element.
Because all of a student’s strengths and weaknesses are found in these three corners — either in the realm of their intellectual knowledge, their technical ability or their creativity, imagination, pitch awareness and intuition, I can diagnose and develop a teaching program for each student that addresses his or her own unique situation. I have also found that early indications of a particular student’s strengths in one of these 3 areas can show where they may ultimately be headed in terms of their proficiency. After making an evaluation of a student I teach them by supporting their assets while strengthening their weaknesses. To do so I divide the areas of evaluation and teaching concentration into:
1. Technique – scales, intervals, arpeggios played in a rhythmic relationship.
2. Tone and sound production – how to physically relate to the saxophone so that the imagined tone is produced, which is a function of the muscles of the abdomen, throat and mouth in unison with the imagination.
3. Repertoire – learning by memory melodies, improvised solos and chord progressions that make up the body of material that serves as a jazz musician’s resource set and starting point; also the playing of classical etudes and transcriptions to understand phrasing and style.
4. Ear training – recognition and identification of intervals, chords, chord progressions, forms, rhythmic structures and phrase elements so that the saxophonist can act creatively and with full awareness in a musical situation.
The following technical requirements will be presented and supported over an 8-semester course of study, tailored to the individual student’s incoming level of experience, aptitude and knowledge. All scales, arpeggios and interval patterns are to be practiced following the “4 Way” practice method, as outlined completely with musical examples in my book, “Melodic Improvising” (Advance Music, 2005). In brief, an interval or chord is played in 4 ways: constant ascending or descending relative to the pitch direction on the saxophone and alternating ascending/descending or descending/ascending.
Practice regimen includes using a practice log as part of the regular lesson to keep track of tempos, articulation/phrasing schemes, subdivisions, etc. for all musical elements practiced. My teaching employs using a metronome (on all 4 beats, 1st and 3rd or 2nd and 4th), varying the articulation and rhythmic subdivision, using jazz rhythmic/slur phrasing and occasional recording of practice sessions for self-evaluation.
Scales – major, melodic minor, harmonic minor, diminished, augmented and harmonic major scales in all keys, Full Range (beginning and ending on root but extending to highest and lowest note playable in each key – either high E or F and low B or Bb)
Arpeggios – built from all scales above, in all keys, 2 octaves where possible (extending into the altissimo range) and divided into:
a) 7th and 9th chord arpeggios diatonic to all scales mentioned above “4 Ways”
b) Diatonic/functional harmonic chords
– Major 7/9/#11/13 – half-diminished 7/9/11
– Dominant 7/9/#11 – minor 7/9/11/13
– Minor 6/9 – diminished 7/9
– Altered dominant 7/#9/b9/#11/b13 – minor major 7/9
c) Modal/non-diatonic chords including
– Augmented major7/9 – Phrygian 3 note structure
– Mixolydian (dom 7 w/3rd & 4th) – Phrygian natural 6
• Lydian 3 note structure – double triads
Intervals – the study of intervals diatonic to all scales above as well as chromatic intervals, practiced in 4 Ways, full range with varied articulation and rhythmic phrasing. A great variety of patterns emerge from the combination of these intervals in 4-way movements:
– 2nds, 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, 6ths, 7ths, 9ths, 10ths
– Open-position major and minor triads
– Diatonic and chromatic interval pairs or 3 note groups moving in all above intervals (leads to an intervallic imagination that is not bound by diatonic or modal structures)
Tone Studies – Overtones/Longtones – In order to know and teach our intuition the sound and feel of every note on the saxophone we must play each note with this goal in mind. Playing overtones develops the skill of separating the harmonics in order to create more color in the tone.
Repertoire/Memorized Tunes – I recommend learning by memory at least 10 standards/jazz tunes per semester, totaling at least 80 after 8 semesters, covering the most common styles performed in jazz: Swing songs, Ballads, Medium tempo standards, Up tempo standards, Blues, Rhythm Changes melodies, Bebop compositions, Hard Bop compositions, Bossa Novas, and modern modal compositions. Major composers to include Gershwin, Kern, Porter, Ellington/Strayhorn, Parker, Monk, Gillespie, Davis, Coltrane, Rollins, Jobim, Shorter, Hancock, Ornette Coleman, etc.
Selected Classical Music Studies/Etudes, Reading Exercises
Guy Lacour – Etudes on the Modes
Sigfried Karg-Elert – 25 Caprices, 30 Studies for Flute Solo, Op.107
Time Feel And Rhythm Training Exercises – Because I believe that rhythm is at the root of all of our abilities to express music I focus on creating rhythmic awareness and strength through listening and effective integration with all other practice areas.
Ear Training With Piano And Saxophone In Diatonic And Chromatic Contexts – I use the piano in every lesson to build a student’s ability to identify and use all of the musical elements with which we deal. I create games and exercises playing with 2 saxophones that further hone their ability to react to what they hear.
Selected Jazz Textbooks: Gary Campbell – Expansions, Hank Mobley Transcribed Solos, Connecting Jazz Theory, Triad Pairs For Jazz; Jerry Bergonzi – Inside Improvisation Series; Charlie Parker – Omnibook; Andy Middleton – Melodic Improvising; Walt Weiskopf – Jazz Etudes
Major Soloists To Transcribe/Study/Analyze: Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Sydney Bechet, Johnny Hodges, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Steve Lacy, Sonny Stitt, Joe Henderson, Hank Mobley, Wayne Shorter, Dexter Gordon, Cannonball Adderly, Jan Garbarek, Michael Brecker, etc.
University Professor of Jazz Composition and Arranging, Jazz Saxophone and Jazz Arrangement at the Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität der Stadt Wien (MUK, University of Music and Arts of the City of Vienna), Austria, since 2006.
Guest artist/conductor and clinician of saxophone, ensembles, improvisation, theory, jazz history and piano with high school, university and adult groups in the Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Scotland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Sweden, and USA, 1991 – 2023.
Artistic director and saxophone teacher, Poysdorf Jazz and Wine summer jazz workshop in Poysdorf, Austria, 2000 – 2009.
Artistic director and saxophone teacher, Jazzinty summer jazz workshop in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, 2009 – 2015.
Saxophone teacher at the Sligo Jazz Project 2014, Jazz Education and Performance Workshop in Sligo, Ireland, 2014.
Erasmus guest workshop/masterclass leader 2007 – 2023 at Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland; Rhythm Music Conservatory in Copenhagen, Denmark; Royal Conservatoire of Glasgow, Scotland; Ionian Conservatory in Corfu, Greece; Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hanover in Hanover, Deutschland; Malmö Academy of Music in Malmö, Sweden; Conservatorio di Musica Stanislao Giacomantonio in Cosenza, Italy; Prinz Claus Conservatory in Groningen, Netherlands; Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Leipzig, Germany; Dublin Institute of Technology in Dublin, Ireland; Academy of Music in Gdańsk, Poland; Academy of Music in Krakow, Poland; Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, Poland; Karol Lipinski Academy of Music in Wrocław, Poland
