When I first met Lynn Klock he had a broken arm. It was 1992, I had disembarked from a New York commuter plane, so small and full that passengers and luggage were re-allocated around the plane to balance weight before take-off. Walking out of Hartford Bradley airport in Connecticut I was met by a charming man with a plaster-cast on his arm; this was the start of a long and significant friendship.

He led me to the most enormous car I had ever seen, and drove us to Amherst, Massachusetts, with the car set on cruise-control, legs crossed, driving with his one good arm. I had arrived in America to start my Master’s degree in music performance with the prestigious Professor Klock. During those wonderful years I would learn as much about living a good life, kindness, and discipline from Lynn Klock as I would about playing the saxophone.

Mr. Klock (as he was always known to his students) welcomed me into his family home, shared with his wife Laura and his two children Suzanne and Ben. I met the saxophone class at his annual class party, thrown to celebrate the start of the academic year.

In those first few days Lynn drove me around Amherst in his huge car which he described proudly as: ‘the biggest car you can get that isn’t a truck!’ (I later learned it was a Chevrolet Suburban; the largest car manufactured in the US at the time).

I saw Lynn’s love of model trains (his basement practice room was also home to an extensive model railway), his love of golf (no one had a lesson scheduled on a Friday afternoon), his love of diet coke (he proudly told me on my last visit to see him in 2018 that he was cutting down to four cans a day) and his love of Basics.

Those Basics. Although tortuous to my younger self, Lynn’s legacy continues; I expect all my students to embark on a similar regime. Scales in every key, slurred and tongued over a series of different speeds, never without a metronome. It took me two months of hard work before Professor Klock acknowledged that I could play with precision and control. High praise from a perfectionist.

As his Teaching Assistant my teaching room was just across the hallway from his office. He would burst in to my practise room and ask me to play scales with him; knowing straight away if I had been slacking off. Never expecting students to do anything he didn’t do himself; not a day went by without his own Basics session. In fact, in 1993 he challenged himself to do a thousand hours of practise in the year. He may have been practising until 10:00 pm on New Year’s Eve that year, but he achieved his goal. Lynn believed that with control of the instrument you could unlock your musical ideas.

From his Carnegie Hall debut recital in 1978, and numerous subsequent performances, Lynn was celebrated for his control and effortless fluidity. He played all the saxophone family but had a huge affinity with the tenor and baritone saxophones, releasing solo recordings for those instruments as well as on the alto saxophone. Lynn was a champion of new music, premiering over one-hundred works as a soloist and chamber musician. He loved working in ensembles, and he loved his students and his colleagues, as his time with the Ancora Chamber Ensemble and the Pioneer Saxophone Quartet can attest.

Lynn Klock grew up in Michigan and was the son of a farmer. It was not a forgone conclusion that he would pursue music, but by happy coincidence he lived only a few miles from the great Larry Teal, his first teacher, later studying with Donald Sinta. In 1980 Lynn moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, where his wife had taken the position of Professor of French Horn. Lynn’s love of the outdoors reflected his upbringing. He managed to bring Michigan farm life to New England, cutting his grass with his ride-on lawn mower, and using his industrial-sized snow blower with great enthusiasm every Winter.

With Lynn you were a student and friend for life. I returned to Amherst several times and Lynn visited the UK many times, notably as a special guest at my 40^th Birthday Concert. The Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull had just spewed ash over most of Europe causing the shutdown of commercial air traffic, but that wasn’t going to deter Lynn. As soon as flights were allowed, he arrived, not worrying about whether he would make it back home.

The countless memories of Lynn, experiences and kindness, makes me so thankful I chose to study with Professor Klock all those years ago. A great and inspirational man and musician; he will be fondly missed.