Playing ALL The Instruments

Ben has been playing the soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, and his alto saxophone in band and jazz band this year. He plays alto in 9th grade band, and Jazzam. He plays tenor in Jazz One (the advanced jazz band...super cool that he is in this band at all as a freshman). He plays soprano when needed in all of them.

It's quite an armful.

His beautiful new alto he got for Christmas.

Soprano sax

He has gotten to be quite comfortable with improv as well. This is something I was never good at, because although I can site read about any piece of music I am not good at all at playing by ear. Ben, however is amazing at playing by ear.

As if this wasn't enough, he found a contralto clarinet in the vaults of the band room. He brought it home one night, and taught himself to play it in about 2 hours. So, he ended up playing it at the band concert about a month later.

At this point, he is interested in pursuing musical education in college. He has a lot of time to change his mind still. However, if he does choose to study music education, I think he will be just fine at the learn to play all of the instruments part.