Two of Penang’s Best Young Saxophonists

Today I’ll feature a couple of young players who are already deep into the horn in their teens. Hopefully you will hear much more to come from these two. 

Emily Brokaw: Emily is 17 years old and soon to graduate from Dalat International School. She has been playing for more than 6 years already, since entering middle school at Dalat, which has an American-style band program. She chose saxophone because both of her parents were professional saxophonists! Emily’s mom, Valeri Brokaw, is the middle school music director at Dalat and also directs the high school jazz band (along with a ton of other duties; Valeri is extremely hard working and you’d be hard pressed to find a nicer person). Dalat has the best school band program on the island and Emily is Dalat’s premier saxophonist. 

I asked Emily a few questions about her interest in the saxophone and here is what she wrote: 

• I currently play both tenor saxophone (a Yamaha intermediate horn) and alto saxophone (currently, a Selmer Mark 7). 
• My favorite music: Concert band - anything by David Holsinger (Gathering at the Ranks of Hebron and Havendance) and Holst's First and Second Suites; Jazz band - Take Five, Blues in the Night, most anything; Solo work - Tableaux de Provence by Paule Maurice. 
• Most memorable performances were in the 2010 and 2011 South East Asia Honor Bands and all [Dalat] Fine Arts concerts. 
• Future plans: I plan to study music education in university [in the U.S.] next year and continue playing in ensembles of all sorts. 

Emily is still a bit shy of improvisation but I am sure that will change as she progresses. You can catch her solo on Take the A Train with Dalat’s jazz band on YouTube. 

Jackie Ashkin: 15-year-old Jackie plays alto and has been playing for 2-1/2 years. In middle school, to my delight, she decided on saxophone. Valeri Brokaw was her first instructor. Jackie is a fast learner and traded in her POS Yamaha school horn for a vintage King Zephyr circa 1937 once we found out that she liked playing. If you like playing on a YAS-23 you will LOVE playing on a Zephyr! 

Jackie has a great voice and has been singing in school since about fourth grade. In Kazakhstan she performed for the International women’s group at age 9, singing in both Russian and English and playing dombra, the local two-stringed instrument. She continued with voice lessons in Malaysia and the ear training has paid off in an accelerated ability to play sax. In Dalat’s high school concert band she gets the chance to play every day, which keeps her chops up and has seriously improved her sight reading. She has played in Dalat’s jazz band for the past two years (both on alto and as featured vocalist – see the A Train video), and she has paid her dues in town doing section work with the Northern Jazz Ensemble big band. 

On stage with Jackie at the G Spot, Summer 2011

Last year I started taking Jackie out on gigs with me and basically just threw her in at the deep end. She had her first professional gig at age 14, at this point has performed in public quite a bit for her age (although never enough). She is learning to improvise by ear, as opposed to reading her solos like most of her peers, who are either scared to death of having to improvise or else sound like a bleating billy goat when they do. She is not afraid to get up on stage, she knows what sounds good, and she is her own worst critic. She intuitively understands key concepts like swing and syncopation and knows that music is all about sound, not about dots on a page. A big advantage is that she has actually listened to the greats of the tradition (Dexter, Jug, Dolphy et al.) and knows what a saxophone is supposed to sound like. Jackie currently plays on a Johnny Hodges-era Buescher Aristocrat (ca. 1936) that gives her the intonation necessary to play in concert band along with the flexibility to play jazz. You can see Jackie in action on our YouTube channel. A 15-year-old already playing Trane and Miles and improvising with originality. 

Go girls!