Klarinet Archive - Posting 001752.txt from 1998/04

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] Cecil Leeson (BIG) - Dan Leeson (tiny)
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 11:52:39 -0400

> From: MX%"klarinet@-----.82
> Subj: [kl] lessons from Leeson

> Glancing through the Spring '98 Selmer Woodwind Notes mailer, I see that
> Prof. Keith Zimmerman, of Illinois Wesleyan University (and therefore a
> colleague of Roger Garrett), did graduate study with "concert saxophone
> pioneer Cecil Leeson at Ball State University." Would this Mr. Leeson
> by any chance be related to anyone on the Klarinet list? Just
> wondering.
>
> Bill Edinger

When I was going to college there were two big names in classical
saxophone playing. One was Sigurd Rascher and the other Cecil
Leeson. I never met Leeson but heard several of his recordings
and he was very, very good. But as far as I know, the only
relationship between us is the spelling of our last names, and
since mine was altered very thoroughly by the Irish immigrantion
and customs men in the late 1880 when my grandfather Leeson came
to America from Lithuania, I doubt very much if we have anything
in common beyond that.

I was once invited to give a talk at a big university with them
being under the assumption that I was Cecil Leeson. I had prepared
a talk, one made up at their explicit request, on Mozart and
performance issues of the 18th century, and when I was introduced
they used Cecil Leeson's biograph (which made me not only very much
older than I was, but dead, too) and "wasn't it marvellous that
after years and years of a great saxophone career, I had in my old
age turned to Mozart study."

Go figure. They had invited me under the presumption that I was
him. But they paid me, so it was OK.

>
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>
=======================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
=======================================

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