Legendary Saxophonist Chris Potter was raised in Columbia, where his talents are remembered by teachers at Rosewood Elementary School, Hand Middle School, and Dreher High School. Highly acclaimed, Chris tours the United States and Europe, has released about 200 albums under his own name, and performed on more than 150 others with well-known musicians. Photography courtesy of Edition Records
Columbia’s patriarch of jazz, Dick Goodwin, says that at age 13, saxophone prodigy Chris Potter was already the best player on the bandstand. Only two years after learning to play, Chris won the International Association for Jazz Education Young Talent Award for Saxophone at age 12.
The next year, he began to appear on stage regularly in Five Points jazz clubs. His principal at Dreher High School, Rae McPherson, still marvels at the fact that Chris made it to class on time.
“I was sometimes pretty tired at the beginning of school,” Chris says, “but it was very exciting. I discovered this real love of music early on, and to get a chance to perform it in front of people with musicians who were older than me and who knew a lot more than I did was exactly what I wanted to do. I often tell people that I don’t really remember deciding to be a musician.”
Born in Chicago to Ellen and David Potter, Chris moved to Columbia as a preschooler when his mother became a professor of educational psychology at the University of South Carolina. His younger sister, Sarah, is now a history professor in Memphis. Chris’ interest in music stemmed from listening to his parents’ eclectic record collection, and by the time Chris was 13, his father, a state government statistician, was chauffeuring him to paid gigs. Now, Chris shares a home in Brooklyn with Ildiko, his wife, and teenage daughter, Anna. Chris met Ildiko at a jazz festival in Hungary, and their daughter was born in Budapest.
Chris remembers playing with Johnny Helms and Terry Rosen at Pug’s in Five Points. Preferring bebop over more contemporary jazz, they grounded Chris in an older style of jazz. He also played weekly gigs with a group led by Jim Mings, a local guitarist who was equally important to Chris’ formative years. Mings’ group would play jazz standards alongside Rolling Stones tunes and free jazz.
John Emche also taught Chris at USC. Chris says, “He didn’t play saxophone, so it was a more general form of music. We would play a lot of duo, and he also showed me a lot of records that I hadn’t heard before and that are very important to me now. He was just a great person, and sadly, he died fairly young when I was in high school, but he was a great influence.” Chris continued to play with Emche’s Left Bank Band under the direction of Roger Pemberton, whom Chris remembers as a great saxophonist and arranger.
Bryson Borgstedt, Chris’ first saxophone teacher at the university, taught him how to read music at age 10. Chris had always played the piano by ear but had not yet taken music lessons.
“In addition to the basic saxophone stuff, he would lend me records, and he would make cassette tapes of different recordings he thought I might like because he could see I was interested in it,” Chris says. Chris’ band directors at Hand Middle School and Dreher High — Mary Lou Schweickert and Janis Cooper — supported him too. And masterful clarinetist Doug Graham worked with Chris after Bryson finished graduate school.
Gwen Hall, Chris’ music teacher at Rosewood Elementary School, used to stay after school to rehearse with Chris. “She would perform on the piano, and I would be on the alto saxophone. She was also someone who encouraged me early on. I feel like I was very lucky to run into a bunch of folks like that,” he says.
Chris spent hours listening to recordings of jazz masters and emulating their playing. “That’s a big way that the jazz language gets passed on,” he says. “There’s a lot that you can learn out of books, but there’s a lot that you really need to learn in a more aural fashion to get the breathing and the idea of just feeling the music and the improvisation — listening to how the conversation goes back and forth between the drums and the saxophone and the bass and the piano.”
While visiting Columbia, both jazz pianist Marian McPartland and legendary bebop trumpeter Red Rodney, who played with Charlie Parker, were introduced to Chris. “I guess somebody said, ‘Oh, you should hear the local kid alto player,’” Chris says.
Piano Jazz, a National Public Radio show hosted by McPartland and produced by South Carolina Public Radio, booked 15-year-old Chris to play with Marian McPartland, who called him “undoubtedly the most compelling saxophonist” of his generation.
“She must have been in her 70s when I met her,” Chris says, “and she was still active and just had a very fresh approach to everything.” Chris ended up joining her for recording sessions later.
At a Main Street Jazz Festival, Chris got to play with Red Rodney, Jimmy Heath, and Clark Terry. Chris credits Eddie Helms and other festival organizers with making that happen. “Red said, ‘Well, when you get to New York, let me know,’ and I did. I gave him a call, and he asked me to play some gigs with him.” It was a pivotal career move.
First enrolling at The New School and ultimately earning a bachelor’s degree from Manhattan School of Music in 1992, Chris says, “It was great to have a university environment, somewhere to go rather than just showing up in New York and going, ‘Okay, I’m here.’ It gave me a little bit of structure and focus and some great people to learn from as well.”
Chris became the youngest person ever to win Denmark’s Jazzpar Prize in 2000 and was named “Tenor Saxophonist of the Year” five times by the Jazz Journalists Association. Endearingly, Chris cannot remember how many albums he has made nor how many awards his work has won. His 2017 album, The Dreamer Is the Dream, received two Grammy nominations, bringing his total nominations to nine — in 2000, Chris won a Grammy for his work on Steely Dan’s Grammy-award-winning album Two Against Nature.
Chris has released about two dozen albums under his own name and performed on more than 150 others with well-known musicians. During quarantine, he created the buoyant record There is a Tide, composing and playing every note on multiple instruments all by himself, mostly in his childhood bedroom in Shandon.
Chris says, “It’s a lot easier to make a bunch of noise and set up the drums and all that stuff in South Carolina than it is here in Brooklyn, especially since all the neighbors, everybody, were home all of the time during the middle of the pandemic. That was a project that I felt I really had to do to keep my own sanity. And I was hoping that it would have some value for someone else as well.” Edition Records released the album in 2020, even in vinyl.
This year Chris toured both the United States and Europe with the SFJAZZ Collective, an all-star group representing the nonprofit organization SFJAZZ, which is based in San Francisco. Chris serves as the group’s musical director. He also toured with bassist Dave Holland and percussionist Zakir Hussain, then with another ensemble including Dave Holland, Lionel Loueke, and Eric Harland.
Next spring Chris expects to release an album that was recorded live at the Village Vanguard in New York this year. “It was exciting that we could finally play live and record something and have the energy of that again,” Chris says. Chris also headlines his own Chris Potter Trio and 19-piece Big Band.
Now that the student has become the master, Chris influences musicians like Bob Reynolds of Snarky Puppy. YouTube videos of Chris’ playing, none of which he posted, garner a staggering number of views, and enterprising arrangers transcribe Chris’ incredibly complicated improvisations. Chris directs an ensemble at New York University, and he is frequently called upon to teach master classes around the world.
Flattered but pragmatic about all the attention, Chris says, “The feeling I have is that I’m just still trying to look for all the beautiful notes and see if I can play them well and in the right order. It doesn’t feel like anything has changed.”
Chris is so fluent in music that it seems like his first language. “I think from the beginning,” he says, “I had that feeling that there were things I wanted to communicate — you know, things that I felt — that I really had no idea how to put into words and really still don’t. So, music can help with that, the things in between the words that are actually maybe the most meaningful things. That’s where music has its power.”
Q&A with Chris Potter at Home
in Brooklyn
Q. What are some of your fondest memories of Dreher High School?
A. I had a lot of good times there — I had a lot of good friends, and I enjoyed it. On Friday nights, I would go to the football games with the Dreher High School marching band, and then oftentimes I would have a wedding reception, or something like that, that I was playing afterward as a professional. So, I remember, I would take the band uniform off and put the tuxedo on and go to that.
Q. What was your least favorite subject in high school?
A. Math. Past a certain level, I just found it very difficult.
Q. What is your favorite restaurant in Columbia, and what did you tend to order?
A. I used to go to Andy’s Deli. It was some kind of sandwich with roast beef and cheese and bacon bits on the top.
Q. What was your first car? Do you have a car in New York now?
A. It was a yellow Nissan that was my family’s car, and it was nicknamed “The Banana-Mobile.” I have never bought a car in my life because I’ve been taking the old cars that my folks don’t want anymore. It is kind of a pain to have a car in New York, but it’s been nice in certain circumstances to have one.
Q. What is your favorite comfort food?
A. Fried rice is the first thing that comes to mind. One of the things I enjoy most about being in a lot of different parts of the world is the local food — the Mexican food in Mexico is incredible, the Japanese food in Japan is unbelievable, and the Italian food in Italy is to die for — so I am spoiled in that way.
Q. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
A. I’d say that I’m an introvert.
Q. What do you do for fun?
A. I like to read. I like walking around, hanging out with friends, hanging out with my family, being with people whom I enjoy being with is the best. Of course, a lot of it ends up revolving around music, but it’s not just the actual playing of music, it’s the whole social scenario around it.
Q. Have you read any good books lately?
A. Yes, definitely. I’m enjoying something now — it’s a history of the American Indian from the late 19th century until the present. It’s called The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee. I’m enjoying that very much and learning a lot that I didn’t know.
Q. Do you tend to be neat or messy?
A. Messy, messy. I can kind of get it together when I have to, but especially when I’m in the middle-of-work mode, stuff is just everywhere, and I don’t even notice.
Q. How has your family reacted to watching your career develop?
A. I’ve always felt a lot of support, and they’ve been cheering me on, just hoping that it brings me fulfillment.
Q. What advice would you give to young musicians?
A. When it comes to trying to improve as a jazz musician, I always say to listen to records and try and copy them. So much information is out there about approaching things this way or that way, but I still feel like the meat and potatoes of really learning the language as a language is listening and copying. I think on a bigger level, no matter what kind of music it is, you should try to hold on to the things that you enjoy and that made you love music in the first place because it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. It’s easy to start comparing yourself to other people and wishing you were something that you’re not. So, it’s a lot better just to focus on what you love about it and the music itself.
