John Ruocco 1952-2025

Master musician, inspirator, mentor

Sometime in the late 1980’s I walked into a room at the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague for my weekly saxophone lesson. All week I had been practicing on a tune my teacher said I should know (I think it was ‘I love you’) and I was quite keen to show him my progress. As I put my instrument together and got ready to play, he pointed to a music stand with some sheet music on it.

“Can you play that for me?” He asked

I looked at the music and saw that it was an orchestral excerpt for clarinet from a Debussy piece (I think it was La Mer).

“I don’t know.” I said. “Don’t you want to hear what I did with I love you?”

“Not really. I’m sure you worked hard. Just play what’s on the stand”

“But it’s for clarinet. And it’s classical!”

“Doesn’t matter; just play the music.”

I looked again at the music and saw that it started with notes that were out of range on a saxophone and that it was quite complex overall. But knowing my teacher’s impatience and intolerance for excuses, I tried to play the piece as best as I could. After a few bars of transposing notes into other octaves and figuring out the rhythms and dynamics, I stumbled to a halt.

“This is really hard.” I said. “I can’t sight-read this just like that.”

He looked at me with a mix of irritation and amusement, grabbed his saxophone and played the Debussy without stopping or mistakes and then looked at me again.

“And you want to be a musician?” He said with an undertone of disdain in his voice. “You should be able to play anything from anywhere on the horn. Now do it again”.

Embarrassed, I sweated through a few more attempts at the Debussy, never really getting it right. In between he was lecturing me about how I should always be prepared for any musical curveball, why I should practice for me and not for him, and why he had no time for excuses because in the big world out there, nobody would care. It was harsh, but he was right. And what’s more, he could do it all. He practised for hours and hours, at night using a digital Casio saxophone (made for children) so as not to disturb his neighbours. Eventually he was just as fluent on the Casio as he was on clarinet or saxophone. He had no patience for anyone who he felt did not work hard enough. He could be grumpy, sometimes even confrontational, but was also blessed with a great sense of humour. He called me Ornsteineke, a little nickname he made up one day.

“You should be able to play anything from anywhere on the horn.”

John Ruocco passed away on Tuesday May 21st, aged 72. He was my teacher at the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague from 1988 to 1992. As a musician, most of what I am today comes from him. Rest in peace dear John.