I never had a teacher like Tim Price. Tim’s passing on July 21st, has had me looking back through our lesson notes, Facebook posts, and emails from the last 10+ years.

We connected when I was in a rut, and needed some direction/motivation. His individual approach to my playing, and humour always made me look forward to my lessons with him – it was the first time that I had taken lessons seriously since my first years at college.

I remember being nervous about my first lesson with Tim – not realising how open he would be to my musical journey, but I soon understood that he was always going to work in my best interests. We hit it off right away. Our lessons were early (8:30am), and although they were scheduled for just an hour, it was common for those to run until 11am or noon. We would talk everything at the beginning of the lessons from music to everyday life, and ease into the saxophone, clarinet, or flute.

His approach justified my playing to myself. I was in a stage of real doubt about whether I was moving in the right direction – Tim made me lean in harder to that direction, and add to it (something that I have tried to incorporate into my own teaching).

Here’s an excerpt from an old blog post from over ten years ago.

Our first lesson was great – Tim had me play over a bunch of my favourite tunes and then he started emailing me the exercises and concepts. 

I really felt (and still feel) like Tim really understands what I’m looking for in my own playing. We have discussions, tell jokes, swap stories and after every lesson I have a huge amount of creative energy that I can pour directly into my horns. One of the biggest challenges and one of the things that I look forward to every week is the spontaneity. I’m not saying that the lessons lack direction or that they are unstructured, Tim has a system, but it’s not a cookie-cutter system. Every exercise or concept that we talk about or apply relates directly to what I’m doing as an artist. This extremely personal approach makes me think about these concepts deeper and I take much more initiative than I have taken in the past to make these concepts my own.

Over the last two months I can feel the direction in my playing has changed. I have a positive outlook on my practice time and I’m truly interested in the music again!

The amount of material that I have collected over the years from Tim is incredible. From worksheets, and woodwind exercises to bootlegs of great performances, I am fortunate to have been able to have him as such a positive influence. If he had transcriptions, lead sheets, photos, or audio in his collection, he would share it.

Over the last year or so, Tim had really stressed to me the importance of writing my ideas down, and sharing them (this is one of the main influences behind the jazz lines that I’ve been sharing lately). His commitment to the woodwind community was extraordinary.

I’m going to miss seeing his name popping up in my feed regularly – usually sharing stories, or photos, or videos that would get me to dig deeper into the history of this music.

Thanks for everything, Tim!