Jean-Marie Londeix, “Master of the Modern Saxophone,” died of natural causes peacefully in his sleep in the early hours of March 3, 2025, at the age of 92 years in Bordeaux, France, not far from Libourne, where he was born, on the banks of the Gironde River. As a saxophonist, he was a child prodigy, a concert artist, a beloved teacher, a scholar and a writer.
Londeix, as we lovingly called him, was a concert artist who performed well over 600 concerts as a saxophone soloist with orchestras, in works often written for him. He also played hundreds of recitals with pianists, exploring and performing idiomatic “music of the saxophone,” not “music for saxophone.” Like the piano music of Frederick Chopin, this music “of the saxophone,” and written for the modern saxophonist, could be played only on the instrument for which it was conceived. He nurtured composers such as Pierre-Philippe Bauzin, Jacques Charpentier, Edison Denisov, Pierre-Max Dubois, Christian Lauba, Ryo Noda, Étienne Rolin, François Rossé, Henri Sauguet, Andriy Talpash and others to write idiomatically for the saxophone. He was likely the first wind player to give full-length concert recital programs with piano, as early as 1952, on a tour to Portugal and Spain with renowned pianist France Clidat. In 1970, Russian composer Edison Denisov wrote his seminal modern work, Sonate pour Saxophone et Piano, for Londeix. It changed everything: the work was premiered and recorded the same year, transforming the saxophone into a modern instrument with its own techniques and modes of playing. He wrote lectures on all topics related to the saxophone, and I translated many of them into English. We toured as a trio, lectured in French and English, performed masterclasses and worked with pianists Roger Admiral and Viktoria Reiswich-Dapp. He left a legacy of artistic non-pop contemporary art music, as well as recordings of the core masterworks for saxophone. A love of the saxophone lives on and is shared forever through his books Towards a History of Saxophone in three volumes, countless other musical books, etudes, scholarly articles and educational DVDs.
I was fortunate enough to work with him for over fifty years, beginning as a saxophone student, later as a student of music, art and life. I became his colleague and collaborator, his best friend, and during his last fifteen years, we called each other frères, brothers. Along with musician and third brother Daniel Kientzy, we have been jokingly known as the Three Musketeers: “les trois mousquetaires, un pour tous, tous pouris.”
He taught and nurtured over 150 international saxophone students from early in his career in Dijon, France, until the end of his distinguished teaching career in Bordeaux. Almost all of those players are today musical artists in their own right, concertizing internationally, but based in their native countries.
Jean-Marie won’t be missed. He lives on in all of us who had close musical connections with him. He founded a music competition in Bordeaux in 1996, reprised in Bangkok in 2008, 2011, 2014 and 2017: The Jean-Marie Londeix International Saxophone Competition. This competition imposes traditional and modern performance requirements on competitors. Plans are taking shape by directors Shyen Lee, Daniel Kientzy and William Street to revive the competition in 2027, after it was halted by COVID in 2020.
Jean-Marie has a large extended family, now led by his two sons: Laurent, a paleoclimatologist and university professor, and Olivier, a distinguished professor of history and wine scholar, with research on French brands and products. Both are teachers, both have Ph.D.s in their fields, and both loved their father in their own ways. They are determined to help conserve the legacy of Jean-Marie Londeix.
A biography of Londeix, written by James Umble and edited and translated by me and others, was released in 2000. Jean-Marie Londeix, Master of the Modern Saxophone, is available in its second edition.
– William H Street, University of Alberta