Tracy Lee Heavner

Modeled on the brilliant approach first formulated by distinguished professor music and master clarinetist Michele Gingras in her Clarinet Secrets and More Clarinet Secrets (both available from Scarecrow Press), Tracy Heavner’s Saxophone Secrets provides advanced saxophonists with 60 performance secrets that will assist in their musical development. This work is the result of 30 years of personal teaching and performance experience. Heavner offers both intermediate players and advanced professionals a wide variety of techniques, which will greatly improve any saxophonist’s performance ability.

Designed to be the go-to hands-on guide for practitioners, Heavner’s strategies consider a vast array of issues for the saxophonist who needs to take that next big step up. Beginning chapters consider various brands of saxophones, mouthpieces, ligatures, reeds, and maintenance techniques that reflect the standard practices and expectations of the advanced performer. The secrets that follow develop and improve embouchure, tone, articulation, and finger technique, allowing saxophonists to analyze their own playing and adjust accordingly. Heavner pulls back the curtain further to introduce those secrets for developing the altissimo register and extended saxophone techniques, from circular breathing and multiphonics to slap and flutter tonguing—all absolute necessities for saxophonists seeking to play contemporary classical, jazz, or commercial music. Finally, Heavner concludes by letting musicians in on those little-revealed secrets for taking their saxophones on the road.

Saxophone Secrets is the ideal work for saxophonists, saxophone instructors, band teachers, and anyone looking to improve their saxophone performance skills or those of their students.