Sean O’Kelley is currently a freshman at Cal State, Long Beach. As a
student, he enjoys making and forming a network of friends, working on his
improvisation, and mastering his own unique tone on saxophone.
Sean began playing the saxophone because he feels music is the most
pleasing aspect of life; he enjoys it as a self-improving discipline. As he
jokingly said, “I wasn’t too good at much else.”
Having studied with Charlie Richard and Dr. Doug Masek, Sean O’Kelley
feels he is ready to form his own jazz combo and jump head first into the
LA Jazz Scene.
Sean O’Kelley has shown talent and great potential in music composition. When
asked about his writing, Sean stated, “I would like to call my music very
‘discontemporary’, utilizing ‘rule-breaking’ as a form of tension and
‘rule-abiding’ as its resolution. Changes of rhythm and use of deception are
also common [in my compositions].” Sean writes music for sax ensembles,
jazz combos, big bands, and concert ensembles. He has had many of his
pieces performed and has aspirations of higher levels of success in writing
music.
Sean’s playing has been influenced by Dextor Gordon’s sound, Coltrane’s
patterns, Hank Mobley’s simplicity and melodic ideas, and Sonny Rollins'
emotion.
Sean O’Kelley feels his greatest accomplishments musically thus far have
been “best sax player” at a jazz festival and numerous solo awards as well
as having 500+ people sit in pouring rain to listen to one of his
performances. In the future he plans on doing anything and everything he
can with music, taking any opportunity to perform.
Top 5 CD’s
1.Coltrane – Giant Steps
2.Hank Mobley – Caddy for Daddy
3.Dexter Gordon – Our Man in Paris
4.Dexter Gordon – Go!
5.Phil Collins – Hot Night in Paris
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