The world lost a great innovator earlier this week in Maynard Ferguson.  In my past when playing the saxophone was at the center of my existence, nothing got me more excited than the chance to play a Maynard Ferguson tune with all my friends in our jazz-rock band.  We had lots of fun using his music to blow our audiences away (and in the process removing a good deal of my hearing.  That’s life).

Ferguson was a great role model as an innovator, always open to new ideas, new technologies, new ways of seeing himself and being in the world.  And he wasn’t afraid to be way out there with some hair-raising, totally crazy, high-altitude trumpet lick.