Learn How to Play Saxophone | Lessons on Technical and Musical skills

In Edith´s ongoing weekly lessons beginners and intermediate students will receive effective help to learn how to play and /or to improve their playing. Her program is tailored individually to each student. Edith will teach all basic issues like sound, embouchure, breathing, finger technique, reading, and rhythm always paired with musical skills like ear training, jazz phrasing, syncopation, groove, dynamic playing, timing and encourage students to improvise. Often praised for her very unique sound, Edith will assist students to develop their own individual sound on the saxophone.

Edith studied with excellent teachers in New York and Vienna. This combined with her vast experience performing with musicians from all over the world in a variety of genres has resulted in a wealth of know-how; from this, she can teach and advise students to learn to play and/or improve their skills in a very practical way and prepare them to make music and play with other musicians and bands from an early level on.

Students will be encouraged to propose which tunes they want to learn to play and start improvising on. Edith, who has a long history of playing jazz and world music with musicians from various regions (mainly Africa, the Middle East, Caucasus, and North & Latin America) will introduce students to basic features of jazz and world music. She will help the interested student to approach and play rhythms and melodic systems from diverse cultures and use various music styles as material for lessons and practice.

About the Coach: Edith Lettner is an Austrian born musician, composer, and painter, who performs internationally with numerous outstanding musicians & bands. With her chosen instruments, alto & soprano saxophone and duduk, she plays jazz, world music, and improvisational music. Edith’s unique sound and polychromatic talent have been shaped by an openness to different genres and her extensive travels. In addition, she has studied with prominent professionals and tutors both in Vienna and New York. Improvisation seems to be written into her DNA; it drives her music, her artwork, and her relentless pursuit of excellence in all things, it defines how she lives her life.

She has recorded many CDs and has composed music for film, theatre and dance performances. Edith’s latest CD with her Austrian jazz quartet FREEMOTION gained international acclaim (including DownBeat Magazine and New York City Jazz Record) and the second half of 2020 will bring 3 new CD-releases with projects in New York and Vienna. Edith has played with musicians from all over the world – focusing on jazz, African, and Middle Eastern music. “I like to put myself in the middle of things and learn from there”. She has traveled many times to Africa to play with local musicians and exhibit her paintings, and in Armenia, she learned to play duduk, a traditional double-reed instrument with a haunting sound. New York, with its experimental music, bebop, and strait-ahead jazz scenes, is a constant source of inspiration for her. So too is nature, and “joining in with its big orchestra”.