Pakawau sax player has “bright future”
Jake Baxendale. “This music is very exciting, there’s just so much to listen to.” Photo: Neil Wilson
Pakawau saxophonist Jake Baxendale is annoyed by the word "talent".
"You hear it bandied around a lot and it just demeans the amount of hard work it takes to do something. If you really want to do something, you can."
Jake is one year into a three-year Bachelor of Music degree, majoring in jazz performance. He is studying at the New Zealand School of Music (NZSM) in Wellington but is home for the summer and he will busk, perform and, if required, teach here.
"I play a couple of times a week outside the Lady Luck coffee caravan," said Jake. "I also do two lunchtime gigs a week at the Deville Café in New Street, Nelson. There, I'm part of a duo with a contemporary of mine at music school, Callum Allardice. He's a brilliant guitarist. I'm pretty busy but I can teach sax as well if there are people who wanted some lessons for the next few weeks."
Jake first picked a sax when he was 10, and he says cannot remember why he chose that instrument to learn.
"I asked my parents if I could learn how to play the sax and they borrowed one and I got started. My first instrument was a tenor sax so it was about the same size as me. I found I could balance it on a couple of wooden blocks When I changed to an alto, I played it kneeling down."
Jake's first teacher was Collingwood artist, Gus Scott. "Gus taught me for four or five years. His method was to work on one thing at a time. It was very practical and hands-on. Just what I wanted. I'd hear a tune and want to be able to play it, so Gus would teach me the D minor scale, say, and then encourage me to improvise around it."
When Jake first auditioned for the NZSM, in 2005, he failed. "I was told I had to do the NZSM's foundation course in jazz because I just didn't know enough," said Jake. "The foundation course is an 18-week crash course in all things jazz. Failing the audition was a real wake-up call. I just hadn't been exposed to jazz in the way that some of my peers had. They'd been learning jazz sax right from the start. The crash course provided the background I needed. Now I'm in the degree course I've had to learn everything all over again from scratch - holding a sax, tuning it, and the sound itself. I've surprised myself. I've discovered a real fascination for jazz. It's not a means to an end as I once thought it might be: it's what I want to do. The NZSM agenda is that when you leave you have the ability to become a professional musician. That's my plan. I have very good teachers.
"The course is hard work, though. The teachers believe that if you're not doing a minimum of four hours' practice a day you're not going to get good at it. It's fairly exhausting, physically and mentally. I aim to do about six hours' practice a day during the week."
Jake's saxophone teacher at the NZSM is the eminent saxophonist Alex Nyman. Alex was happy to express his confidence in Jake's musical future.
"He's a very, very good student. He's so attentive, just soaks up information and then has the work ethic to turn everything into practice. He has loads of potential. I'm looking forward to the next two years at least, teaching Jake, and I'm confident he'll have a bright future, here and overseas," said Alex.
Jake says that the weekly two-hour performance workshops are an interesting part of his course. "That's where you get performance experience as well as constructive criticism from your teachers and peers," he said. "The best part is listening to one of them doing something really, really brilliant. When it's your turn, it's less pleasant but very instructive."
Jake's idols are the jazz sax giants of the past - Charlie Parker and John Coltrane.
"You've got to understand where you're coming from before you can know where you're going. I listen to a lot of Michael Brecker, too," he said. "He was a follower of Coltrane's and a very influential contemporary sax man. This music is very exciting, there's just so much to listen to. You could never get sick of it because it's so dense."
Jake hopes to perform in Takaka in late January. "It might take some organising," he said, "but there are some other NZSM students heading this way and we could put a groove-based trio or quartet together for a gig."
Neil Wilson
