Professional Saxophonists

To answer your first question:

As far as I know, Julien Petit is still not teaching. I'll ask him again, but I'm pretty sure I know that the answer is negative. I met Julien in summer 2003, and he was already making his living freelancing as a concert saxophonist. Since then, he has expanded his performance activities to include quartet, klezmer, and even a bit of jazz.

Daniel Kientzy (of recording-plethora fame on another thread) has also never taught. He might have the longest performance career ever of any concert saxophonist.

Other very busy concert saxo artists such as Arno Bornkamp, Daniel Gauthier, Nobuya Sugawa, James Houlik, John Harle and quite a few others can or could have certainly live(d) solely on the income of their performance careers, but would they want to? I mean, really. How could you refuse a school throwing money for you to teach a dozen and a half kids. The extreme bump in income in many of these cases makes it a no-brainer, especially if a very active performance career can be undertaken simultaneously.

To attempt to answer your question about the term "professional":

Our definitions are different. I recently heard a man play soprano saxo with a jazz combo in Memphis who blew me away with his sensitivity, phrasing, relevance + originality of improvisation, pretty much everything. I talked to him during a break, and he said he's a doctor and works at the local hospital. He gigs for fun. Well, I would label him a professional.

I'm a bartender at a fine dining French bistro that sells more wine than any other restaurant in the southeast U.S., incl Miami, Atlanta, New Orleans. I play pretty well -- I think well enough to call professional. I even get paid to play -- more this year than last, and next year is starting to look pretty good already. The jury's still out, but I like where it's heading -- you're going to lose money in the first 3-5 years anyway, no matter how well you're trained as a concert artist.

There's a man named James Umble in a weird spot between Pittsburgh and Cleveland. I've walked past his office at 7:30-8am and heard what I never had thought possible as a young 20-something -- major and minor scales in fourths being executed with deadly precision at speeds in excess of quarter=152 (in sixteenths), perfectly voiced tone colors with every transitory aspect controlled. Perfect. Other mornings, I heard beautifully flowing transcribed lines from Ravel Piano Concerto in G (2nd mvmt), Chambers Come Down Heavy (inner mvmts) etc. Stunning. He gets few gigs, but **** if I've ever heard a better artist on the saxo. I call him a professional.

There are a lot of "pretenders" out there, don't get me wrong. Lots of guys who teach at the college level and say that they have a performance career because they do a lot of recital/masterclasses at universities, play all the conferences, and even put out a vanity CD or two. I don't buy it.

I'm not a dictionary guy, and maybe we're really arguing the same point. Just contributing my perspective.

Angel

The distinction strikes me as artificial. Marcel Mule taught at the Paris Conservatory, yet performed many premieres of important works for our instrument, and was recorded a fair amount. His successor, Deffayet, was the saxophonist for the Berlin Philharmonic (arguably, the highest-caliber "professional" ensemble in the world, certainly at that time), yet does his teaching at the Paris Conservatory (likely his most regular income stream) somehow diminish that achievement?

My experience, and what I personally strive for, is to achieve equal levels of professionalism and passion in both my teaching and performing. The limited "professional" performance opportunities available to saxophonists (as opposed to other orchestral instruments) mean that we, even more than others, must rely on a patchwork of classical performance, jazz performance, doubling gigs in pits, etc., in order to have a viable "professional" career. And, if we have a strong desire, ability, and passion, we may also marry a teaching career to our performing.

The notion that Hemke, Rousseau, Delangle, Mule, Deffayet, etc. are not "professional" saxophonists is an absurd one, as the original poster seems to imply that there has been but one "professional" saxophonist in history. Not much of a profession, if that is the case! I'm not sure what end would be served by such an exceedingly narrow definition of "professional." On the other end of the spectrum, plenty of musicians in a wide variety of genres who are marginally talented make a living in music, if our definition of professional merely relates to the financial aspect. By this definition, Britney Spears is a true professional, while Claude Delangle is not, as she makes (presumably) no income from teaching, while he does. An odd premise, don't you think?

For what it's worth, my dictionary's first definition of professionalism is "of, engaged in, or worthy of the high standards of, a profession." The third definition finally mentions income, "earning one's living from an activity, such as a sport, not normally thought of as an occupation." Webster's 2nd College Edition, 1980--and I doubt that the definition has changed much since then.