Otis speaks about his trajectory towards becoming a professional musician. How he got started on the saxophone and what it was like teaching former classmates. He shares his teaching style, the importance of music in his family, the importance of tone and intonation, how he and his students practice the five T’s along with the challenge of switching between playing A440 in the US and A442 in other countries.
Show Notes
Dr. Otis Murphy is professor of Saxophone at the prestigious Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington Indiana. Otis has the distinction of being the youngest faculty ever appointed to the Jacobs School of Music, having obtained his position at the tender age of 28.
Otis was a student of Classical Saxophone icon Eugene Rousseau and received a Fulbright Fellowship to study in France with french saxophonist Jean-Yves Fourmeau.
In our conversation we spoke about his trajectory towards becoming a professional musician. How he got started on the saxophone, what a big influence his father was and the sacrifices his family made so he could, as a teenager, travel to Athens Georgia to study with Dr. Kenneth Fischer at the University of Georgia. Otis also shared what it was like as a freshman at Georgia to be playing with Doctoral Students in a saxophone quartet, which included fellow Playful Musician guest Rhett Bender.
Otis also talked about what is was like teaching former classmates, his teaching style, the importance of music in his family. His wife and 6 children all are musicians! He shares about the importance of tone and intonation, how he and his students practice the five T’s and the challenge of switching between playing A440 in the US and A442 in other countries.
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The Playful Musician dives deep into a musician’s journey, techniques and influences. From the first instrument they played to how they prepare for big concerts or recordings to how they find joy in the long practice hours, this podcast reveals the beautiful, and peculiar, details of an artist’s journey.
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