Paul Brodie, 73: 'Ambassador of the Saxophone'
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PAUL BRODIE, 73: MUSICIAN
'Ambassador of the saxophone' was a champion of his own virtuosity
Musician who fell in love with the sax as a boy probably performed more
music for the instrument than anyone in history, writes Sandra Martin. He
was also a tireless and polished self-promoter who even invented a fictional
front man to ensure concert bookings
SANDRA MARTIN
November 24, 2007
The man and his instrument. During his 50-year career as a professional
musician, Paul Brodie, "the ambassador of the saxophone," probably played
more concerts, recorded more albums, toured more countries and taught more
private students than any classical saxophonist of his or any other day. He
was the champion not only of his own virtuosity as a player, but of the
saxophone as a musical instrument.
The saxophone, invented by Belgian Adolphe Sax in Paris in the 1840s, is a
hybrid that combines the volume and carrying power of brass with the
intricate key work and technical finesse of woodwinds. Although some modern
classical composers have written for the saxophone, it is still mainly
played in military and blues bands and jazz combos. Mr. Brodie tried to
change that.
"He was a master promoter and the saxophone needed someone like Paul,
because as an instrument, it was invented late in the history of music, so
it was shut out of orchestral circles," said his former student, concert
saxophonist and composer Daniel Rubinoff "The great composers had already
established the orchestra and composers in Europe didn't really want to take
a chance on this latecomer.
Mr. Brodie was the first person to teach saxophone at the Royal Conservatory
of Music in Toronto. He was not himself a composer, but he persuaded
composers such as Srul Irving Glick, John Weinzweig, Bruce Mather and Violet
Archer to write daunting music for the saxophone. In his quest to promote
the saxophone he co-founded the World Saxophone Congress with Eugene
Rousseau in Chicago in 1969 to bring players, critics, composers and
audiences together in a different city every four years.
"He built a career for himself. He was an incredible worker, he believed in
himself totally and he never looked back," said Jean-Guy Brault, a flutist
with the National Arts Centre Orchestra for more than 30 years. "He was an
icon in the saxophone world - in the classical sense, but he also taught
many jazz saxophonists," said Mr. Brault. "He changed my life. He opened my
eyes to so many things - the realities of the professional music world," he
said. "I owe a lot to him."
Paul (Zion) Brodie was born in Montreal in the bitterest depths of the
Depression, the younger son of Sam and Florence (née Schiller). When Paul
was 10 months old, his father, who ran a dry goods store, moved his family
to the north end of Winnipeg, where he found work selling radios in an
appliance store. The family moved again when Paul was 11, to Regina in
neighbouring Saskatchewan.
He went to Strathcona School, sang in the junior choir at synagogue and
played the clarinet in the Regina Lions Junior Band. In high school, the
only subject that interested him was music. Sick in bed with a cold one day
in Grade 10, he heard Freddie Gardner play I'm in the Mood for Love on the
saxophone.
He was besotted with the sound and immediately decided to switch
instruments. Goodbye clarinet. Hello saxophone.
He earned money to buy a saxophone working at a local deli, but he couldn't
find a woodwind teacher and so transferred what he knew about playing the
clarinet to the saxophone.
After graduating from high school in 1952, he packed his sax and his
clarinet and headed to Winnipeg where he entered United College, but failed
miserably in a pre-law program. With support from his high-school music
teacher, he was accepted the following year at the University of Michigan,
where Larry Teal taught the saxophone.
In one of his first classes in the history of music he heard a recording of
French classical saxophone virtuoso Marcel Mule playing the alto sax. His
ambitions changed; whereas he once hoped to be good enough to play in a band
led by a musician of the calibre of Tommy Dorsey or Les Brown, he now
considered the possibilities of becoming a classical saxophonist.
He joined the university band under conductor William Revelli and played the
bass saxophone when they performed in Carnegie Hall in April, 1954. He also
formed a dance combo called The Stardusters, which helped earn tuition money
and taught him a great deal about the business of promoting and organizing a
group.
After graduating with a bachelor's degree in music education and a master's
degree in performance in December, 1957, he went to Paris to study with
maestro Marcel Mule. Back in Canada, he moved to Toronto and looked for a
job teaching saxophone.
"The Royal Conservatory of Music is now in its 72nd year and we have never
allowed a saxophone in the building," protested Ettore Mazzolini, director
of the RCM, but the ever-persuasive Mr. Brodie succeeded in getting an
audition and played so well he broke the embargo. He was a woodwinds
instructor from 1959 to 1960. Soon, he was also playing on an occasional
basis for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and doing regional tours with
Jeunesses Musicales du Canada, first with pianist George Brough and then
with Colombe Pelletier as his accompanist.
Late in November, 1959, a musician friend introduced Mr. Brodie to Rima
Goodman, a modern dancer (and later a fibre artist) who worked in New York,
but whose parents lived in Toronto. They were married on March 13, 1960.
Their daughter, Claire, was born in October, 1964.
Mr. Brodie made his debut as a soloist with the TSO at a Sunday afternoon
concert on Dec. 27, 1959, with Walter Suskind conducting and his New York
debut at the Town Hall on Nov. 18, 1960, with George Brough accompanying him
on the piano and Mrs. Brodie turning pages.
There were only about 45 people in the audience, but one of them was Raymond
Erickson, the music critic for The New York Times. "Mr. Brodie's skill made
everything he played sound fluent and easy although the music was studded
with technical difficulties ... producing a lovely soft tone when he wanted
to ... in his splendidly vital performance," he wrote. A jubilant Mr. Brodie
phoned the Canadian Wire Service and begged them to pick up Mr. Erickson's
review, which they obligingly did, flashing the news about the Canadian
native's success in the Big Apple. Mr. Brodie carried that tattered clipping
in his wallet for the rest of his life.
Because two performance careers in one family meant too much travelling for
a couple that wanted to stay together, the Brodies decided to make their
base in Toronto. There, they established the Brodie School of Music and
Modern Dance early in 1961 in a former furniture store. The dance studio was
on the ground floor, six music studios were in the basement and the second
floor had two apartments. They lived in one and turned the other into an
additional five music studios.
One of his first students was Jean-Guy Brault, who had played saxophone for
fun while studying philosophy at university. He studied saxophone, clarinet
and flute for about two years and then began teaching in the Brodie school
before taking a master's degree at the University of Michigan with Mr.
Brodie's old teacher, Larry Teal. "He was a fantastic teacher," Mr. Brault
said of his mentor, describing Mr. Brodie as "encouraging and never
flinching."
When the National Arts Centre was looking for players for its new orchestra
in 1969, Mr. Brault auditioned and got a job as second flutist. He played
with the orchestra for more than 30 years, retiring in 2002 after a concert
with jazz singer Cleo Laine and her saxophonist husband, John Dankworth
The Brodies ran their school for nearly 20 years, employing about 20 music
and dance teachers, and training about 650 students a season - among them
Willem Moolenbeek, Lawrence Sereda, Robert Pusching, John Price and Robert
Bauer. Mr. Brodie also taught woodwinds at the University of Toronto from
1968 to 1973 and formed a quartet in 1972 to showcase his own playing and
the work of a revolving group of three students. The Paul Brodie Saxophone
Quartet played at the World Saxophone Congress in London in 1976 and in the
1981 film Circle of Two.
Never a slouch when it came to self-promotion, the canny Mr. Brodie invented
a fictitious character, Ronald Joy, to serve as his front man in booking
concerts. After printing business cards and letterhead, the Brodies and some
of their students stuffed envelopes and sent them to more than 5,000 concert
sponsors throughout North America. When potential sponsors called the school
asking for Mr. Joy, the call would be put through to Mr. Brodie who would
lower his voice by a couple of octaves and start bargaining performance
fees, hotel rates and dates. Mr. Joy booked nearly 800 concerts for his
"client" in the next two decades and also promoted Mrs. Brodie's career as a
sculptor and fibre artist.
Mr. Brodie was playing his saxophone in his music studio one day in 1978,
when the phone rang. The caller was actor Warren Beatty, casually inquiring
if he could use a recording of Mr. Brodie playing the saxophone in Heaven
Can Wait, his movie about a football player who also plays the soprano sax.
An amateur saxophonist, Mr. Beatty believed that Mr. Brodie's recording of
the fourth movement from Handel's Sonata No. 3 would be perfect background
music for the scene in which Mr. Beatty's character plays football with his
servants.
After agreeing on terms, Mr. Brodie put his promotional skills to work.
Before long "the Canadian media somehow got the idea that a Canadian
saxophonist was being featured throughout the film," according to the
account that Mr. Brodie related in his autobiography, Ambassador of the
Saxophone. When Heaven Can Wait was nominated for several academy awards,
the Brodies and Claire (then 13) flew to Los Angeles, where Mr. Brodie sent
250 postcards pumping his connection with the film to Canadian media and
arranged to do a live telephone interview with CBC television the day after
the ceremonies.
The following year, the Brodies closed down their school and the quartet.
The lease was up, he was in "phone ringing-off-the-hook" demand after the
release of Heaven Can Wait and she was "wildly busy" with commissions for
her work as a fibre artist. He never stopped teaching, however, either
privately in a smaller studio or at York University, where he taught from
1982 until the late 1990s.
Concert saxophonist and composer Daniel Rubinoff was one of his last
students. "I needed a mentor and I found one," he said in a telephone
interview. After studying in Europe, he worked with Mr. Brodie for 18 months
beginning in 1995 and won the gold medal at the Royal Conservatory for the
ARCT exams in 1997.
"One of the things about Paul's legacy is that he realized that you had to
practice the saxophone to become as good a performer as you could possibly
be, but you also had to be a tireless promoter," Mr. Rubinoff said. "He was
a wonderful business person and he passed that on to people like me." How to
have a career as a concert saxophonist, how to talk to an audience, how to
be tough about criticism, how to cold call a concert promoter and how to set
up a teaching studio, were among the synergistic "life lessons" that Mr.
Rubinoff learned from Mr. Brodie.
About seven years ago, Mr. Brodie, who was suffering from high blood
pressure and diabetes, developed an aortic dissection - a tear in the walls
of the aorta which is frequently fatal. "Miraculously" without surgery "his
body glued itself back together," according to Mr. Brodie's daughter,
Claire. "The last seven years were a gift."
Earlier this fall, an MRI revealed an enormous aneurysm in Mr. Brodie's
aorta. Mr. Brodie asked if he had time to make a CD of favourite pieces with
harpist Erica Goodman before undergoing surgery. (The CD, which was recorded
at Grace Church on the Hill in Toronto, will be released shortly.) On Monday
morning Mr. Brodie was wheeled into surgery, but three-quarters of the way
through the long operation, his heart gave out.
PAUL BRODIE
Paul Zion Brodie, O.C., was born in Montreal on April 10, 1934. He died
during heart surgery at Sunnybrook Hospital on Nov. 19, 2007. He was 73.
Predeceased by his parents, he leaves his wife, Rima, his daughter Claire
and an older brother.