The launch of Saxophone Classics marks the beginning of a new and exciting venture for The Classics Labels. Although the saxophone has a long heritage as a classical instrument, this heritage was for many years overshadowed by the instrument’s extraordinary success in popular music. Since the 1980s, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in the saxophone among classical performers and composers. Saxophone Classics will address and reflect this growing interest.

Clarinet Classics already has a back catalogue of intriguing and exciting saxophone releases, from artists as diverse as the Delta Saxophone Quartet, Stephen Cottrell, Rudy Wiedoeft and Marcel Mule. Future releases will combine re-issues of the great classical saxophone masters – Mule, Deffayet, Rousseau, Rascher and many others - with releases by exciting young artists, while also addressing the educational needs of aspiring saxophone players.

Overall the label will become a natural home for saxophonists worldwide, and a source of information on the instrument, its major players, as well as providing a wealth of historical and factual information about this most iconic of musical instruments.

Stephen Cottrell, Artistic Director of Saxophone Classics, is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Music at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is both a scholar and practitioner. He has had a long career as a performer, founding and leading for nearly two decades the Delta Saxophone Quartet. He has commissioned works from a variety of significant British composers, including Gavin Bryars, Mike Westbrook, Roger Redgate, Graham Fitkin and others. He is presently working on a book on the saxophone for Yale University Press, which will be the first full-length monograph of its kind on the instrument.