An endorsement deal and (another) new saxophone!

In a very amazing turn of events, I was fortunate enough to become an endorser for a company that is making some amazing saxophones – RS Berkeley.  A few weeks ago while I was in L.A. I got a message from Christian Fabian, an old friend of mine, who let me know that this company was looking for endorsers.  They already have some great horn players using their instruments, including Erica von Kleist, Mike DiRubbo, and Sharel Cassity, so I decided to give it a whirl.  I went out to RS Berkeley’s office in New Jersey and tried out five different horns from their “Virtuoso” series: a regular lacquer, a black nickel plated, a matte finished, a silver plated, and a dark lacquer.  I fell in love with the dark lacquered one.  It feels sort of like a Mark VI and has a beautiful clear tone. So I was able to sell my “old” horn (thanks again Sean!) for what I paid for it and purchase the new one at cost.  Phew! Two horns in two months after having the same saxophone for 22 years.  I think I’ll be with this one for a while though.

You can check out my endorser page on the RS Berkeley site here.

Some photos (and hopefully some audio samples!) real soon.

My new alto saxophone!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about losing my 22 year old Selmer Super Action 80 Serie II alto saxophone.  It still hasn’t been found, and I’m hoping that the person (insert whatever expletives you desire here) who has not returned it as of yet will suffer severe karmic retribution.  I’m still hopeful it may turn up…but you never know I suppose.

Regardless, my parents totally helped me out and gave me the cash to get a new horn.  There are the greatest parents in the entire world, for the record, and I don’t know what I would have done without their help.  Thanks though to a whole bunch of people that said I could borrow their horn until I got a new one, as well as all the lovely messages people left for me on Facebook.  It’s time like these when you know who your friends are!

Last week I tried out about 6 horns and mouthpieces (I lost that along with the horn, a Meyer 8 that I’d been blowing on for 15 years) over the course of 90 minutes, and ended up buying the first sax that I tried – a Roberto’s Wind Pro Alto.  It played great and felt very similar to my old sax…in fact if played better than my old sax, which needed a fair amount of work.  It has an excellent dynamic range and a beautiful, robust tone.  I’m still working at trying to find the instrument’s “cruising altitude,” dynamically speaking, but that’s normal with an instrument of this caliber.

So all’s well that ends well.  I’m still thinking that this experience has been the Universe’s way of telling me that I needed to move on to something new and press the reset button.

My new badass alto saxophone