Sax Player Savors Visit to Big Apple

Seated among the well-dressed celebrities, the nervous nominees and recording industry executives at the 39th annual Grammy Awards tonight will be a 17-year-old Westlake Village youth whose goal is to one day be among them as a working artist.

Sam Sadigursky, an accomplished tenor saxophonist, has been in New York since last week performing in the pre-award week festivities as part of the Grammy All-American High School Jazz Band, his second appearance at the event in as many years.

Sam said going to the ceremony in the Big Apple is exciting, although he attended the 1996 awards show in Los Angeles.

“That is really the center of the jazz world,” he said. “That’s where most jazz musicians live and the music is really alive, living and breathing.”

Sam, an Agoura High School senior, said he plans to attend an East Coast music college next year. He developed his love for music at an early age--his parents are musicians and his mother taught him the piano when he was very young.

The Grammy honors aren’t his first. He took second place in the Music Center Spotlight Awards last April.

Though not unprecedented, his repeat performance with the Grammy high school band is rare.

In the Los Angeles All-Star High School Band and Choir--from which the musicians are chosen--Sam was against stiff competition, said David Sears, senior project manager for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

“The ensemble this year had lots of really fine musicians,” Sears said. “But Sam is also a fine young musician.”

Sam said he has never seen himself as anything but a professional musician.

“There is sort of a saying among musicians, ‘If you have a choice, take that choice.’ But I really don’t see myself as having a choice,” he said. “I have to do this.”