by Hayden Brown
Cracking the door to his saxophone sanctuary, he dons his neck strap and prepares for another day of teaching his life’s passion.
To say that Michael Cox loves the saxophone would be an understatement. After 40 years of practice, he sounds like his playing—his voice, the pitched breath of a metal sax.
“I didn’t know it would be sax, but I knew it would be music,” Michael Cox, 52, says, opening his palm and crooking his neck back.
He wears brown shoes, slim blue jeans, and a black sweater. His neck strap swings with the motion of his body. He is squirming, as if the ordinary office chair he sits in is too small, while describing his early endeavors into music.
“I would sneak into the band room and play organ–” his older brother was an organist, “–and I could turn it on because he had showed me how,” he said. This is his first memory of playing music; he is excited about it as he describes the tactile feel of the keys.
A student of his is late for their lesson which allows us to conduct the interview two hours earlier than we had planned. The setting is casual and tells a story of an eccentric inhabitant.
We are in his office, surrounded by music. The walls are adorned with posters of jazz musicians and the shelves are brimming with CDs and sheet music. Every flat surface is covered: the vinyl record player, the upright piano, and the work bench. The small office is overstuffed, and the three saxophones lined against two of the many file cabinets constrict movement even farther.
Michael seems content among the organized chaos and after speaking for awhile I begin to see it for what it is—a shrine to the saxophone, a sanctuary.
He continues the interview with an infectious enthusiasm, his clouded green-blue eyes flare with memory.
He says that he was intimidated by the string instruments which had looked obtuse and complex, but the keyboard had made sense. It was a simple thing.
However, when signing up for 6th grade band, he chose the saxophone. He looks to someone who isn’t there and grabs at the air in front of him.
He is struggling to remember why he chose the saxophone instead of keyboard. He decides that it was someone he heard play a saxophone at home that sold him, and says that with more time he could recall the tune they played.
After joining band, the young saxophonist began performing only two years later at age 12. His older brother would put him in with funk and rock ensembles at 14.
By 15, Michael was playing in bars. From this point on he would be a gigging musician, performing thousands of times with countless ensembles over the next 37 years. But at that point, he still wasn’t playing Jazz. “Jazziest we got in those days was Hancock,” he says.
And though he is Professor of Jazz Studies and gets much jazzier than he did as a child, he is still reluctant to label himself.
To the question, “When did you first realize you were a jazz saxophonist?” he replies, “I’m still not,” with an abrupt laugh.
Michael Cox does not see himself as just a jazz saxophonist, but as an all encompassing performer.
And as an on call saxophonist for The Columbus Symphony Orchestra and Pro Musica, two of Columbus’s top performing classical ensembles, he is right.
There was a time when Michael thought his career as a saxophonist might be over. He had recently finished his master’s degree and was teaching at three schools. He spent half of his nights on the road.
His tone changes and he sounds sensitive, more serious than before. He says there were, “…temptations at the bar and on trips.” It is clear that he is uncomfortable discussing his past struggles with addiction.
“I wound up partying pretty hard,” he says. Michael retracts inwardly for a moment until suddenly, he begins laughing. He explains that attaining his doctorate allowed him to get his life back on track, saying, “Some people go back to church, I went back to college.”
Today, Michael is a decorated professional saxophonist and accomplished teacher. Appearing on nearly two dozen albums, performing in 12 different ensembles, and teaching full time, he is truly a working class musician.
His busy work schedule has kept him from producing as much original material as he would like though, with only one of the 12 albums comprised of original compositions (Abstractions, Dedications, & Red Dirt).
He smirks at this and comments that he is, “…sort of a perpetual sideman.”
With this in mind, next year he will be taking a one-semester sabbatical leave to record a new album.
As he talks about his upcoming project, intensity builds in the air and a personality that creates the sort of environment we are sitting in rises to the surface of his voice.
He talks about what his life will be like on the sabbatical leave, describing in a slow drawl days where he will forget to eat, relishing the idea of constant practice.
“Breakfast, practice, lunch, practice, dinner,” he says, leaned forward in his chair.
I ask him how this relates to Capital, his obsession, his dedication, his life, and he tells me that it all relates.
He says that saxophone is a balance of the head, heart, and hands; it seems true for most things, sports, classes, relationships, are only conglomerations of thought, earnestness, and hard work.
“I had to learn there was a difference between a player who teaches, and someone who embraces his teaching,” he says.
Teaching is one of the most valuable parts of his life, he believes, because it is one part of a whole that makes up his experience. He feels that this experience, this cumulative learning, comes through in his playing.
“I think it is important to get as many experiences as you can,” he says. Though it has not always been easy, it is hard to imagine Michael Cox as anything other than a saxophonist.
“I moved away from my family to do this,” he says, in a way that lets you know it was worth it.
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