Making a Connection With Your Saxophone

Joe Riposo’s latest book, “Making A Connection With Your Saxophone” offers teaching techniques to help students physically put into practice what they have learned in the classroom. The premise is that students need to learn to play what is heard and not what they think they see on the printed page. All parts of the brain need to become engaged while learning – and this book helps you figure out how to do just that! In the first part of the book, Riposo has included a Learning Design Model and Whole-Brain Learning Design Model to help develop an understanding of the whole-brain approach. This book goes on to list appropriate lesson materials and identifies teaching styles and strategies that are used to create the environment from which students learn appropriate jazz styles and jazz tunes. Riposo describes how jazz books are used in lessons to bring about learning on the highest level possible. Students are taught to use their knowledge and make a connection with pre-existing knowledge. A list of essential jazz tunes is included to facilitate building a jazz repertoire. The concept here is by the integration of learned knowledge students will play music through their instrument and feel a sense of relationship. The instrument now becomes a part of the player’s body.