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Saxophone player refuses to play the blues
The Advocate
A tenor saxophonist who attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston Mass., was forced by injury to stop playing for several years — but now is playing again at MHCC.
Morgan Herst developed tendonitis when he was 18 after practicing up to five hours a day for several years. He left Berklee after one semester in fall 2005.
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"I dropped out because I didn't feel like it was worth going there without being able to do things on my own," Herst said. "Because of my injury, I didn't play for several years. I injured myself in high school and I just tried working through it," he said.
After dropping out of Berklee, Herst attended Portland State University, on and off, taking general studies classes from 2006 to winter of 2010."I would try and study something and then lose interest and go work somewhere," he said.
"Music is what I wanted to do."
During his time off, he played with a few indie bands in Portland that, according to Herst, wasn't as technically demanding.
Herst was prescribed to physical therapy, and also went to a chiropractor and tried acupuncture."I tried a lot of things to heal. I think it is kind of a hard thing to diagnose and treat, because it is a soft tissue injury," said Herst.
He first started playing the saxophone when he was 12, and started getting serious when he was 15.
He says his influence was Thara Memory, who (according to Herst) was big in the Portland jazz scene and was the band teacher at his high school, The Arts and Communication Magnet Academy in Beaverton.
"He weeded out all the people who were 'just there' and showed us what we could be," Herst said of Memory.
This is Herst's first quarter at Mt. Hood; he is a part-time student this fall.
"I picked MHCC because I know Susie Jones. She worked with my band in high school; we came here every year for a jazz band festival in the spring," Herst said. "When I decided I wanted to try to get back into music in a serious way, I sent her an e-mail and we talked."
Jones, the MHCC Jazz Band director, said, "I was excited to see Morgan entering into our program because of his high quality musician ship and past experiences. MHCC is a great place for Morgan to be growing musically while rehabilitating from tendonitis."
Herst said during the summer he would come to MHCC and use the practice rooms.
"The knowledge is still in my brain, I still remember things, but it's a matter of getting the muscle memory back," he said.
He has to spread his practicing throughout the day: he practices and then goes to class, has lunch, practices, goes to class, etc. He generally is at school from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and is able to practice up to three hours on a good day.
"It's not as bad as it used to be (the tendonitis), I have to be cautious of it, because it could easily get bad again. I stretch my body before playing. It's a lot of time and work to put into it, but it's the only thing I wanted to do," he said.
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