John Isley

Just shy of my 18th birthday, I got a mysterious phone call. “This is Hank Rush. I sing lead and run the Fantastic Showmen. We need a saxophone player and you were recommended to me. You interested in a gig?” 

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So… where to begin?

Until last night, after almost 32 years as a musician in New York, I had never played the Blue Note. I’d been there many times to hear other artists. Never set foot on the stage myself.

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This originally appeared on my EWI website, ewilogic.com, on September 12, 2012:

​​I think ultimately the question becomes: “What creates a musical identity on an instrument?” I’ve posted this question before on other wind forums and have gotten minimal…

30 years… My oh my. Where has it gone? On July 16, 1986, – 30 years ago today – the 19 year old version of me, from nowhere-special North Carolina stepped off a Piedmont Airlines jet, with a duffel bag…

I wrote this as a response to behavior in an FaceBook discussion group:

There’s been a lot of discussion lately of “pro” in this group, and what that means vis a vis the beginning and intermediate members (and pros I…

In the fall of 2011, I was asked to play the low reed chair on the first national tour of the Tony Award winning Broadway show, Memphis. Since I didn’t own my own bass clarinet at the time, and had…