Sydney Jazz Musician Andrew Speight Has Passed Away

Sydney jazz musician Andrew Speight, who lived in San Francisco, played the saxophone with jazz bands in the area, and taught music at San Francisco State University, passed away.

He passed when his car got trapped on train tracks and was struck by two trains in Burlingame, California.

"Dear my friends, I wish I didn’t have to share this devastating news," his wife, NH Speight Jo, wrote on social media. "Our lovely Hurricane Andrew Speight left this world yesterday. December 1st. 2022. Please…. take a moment to pray for his peace."

"I didn’t want to believe it. I wouldn’t take it in. I think I was looking for ways to have it be untrue," friend and music journalist Jeff Kaliss said. "It removes an audible life force. There was a way that Andrew played the alto saxophone there was none other like that in the Bay Area.

"[Speight was] Totally expressive, totally sincere and imaginative. He was a brilliant improviser."

In an obituary posted by the San Francisco Classical Voice, his sister Emma Mayhew commented, "We’d wake up to music, listen to music through dinner, talk about what we were listening to, and go to sleep to music.

"Andrew was such a thoughtful person, he was always observing life," she added. "He always knew there was a way to achieve what he wanted to achieve. But he was also a dreamer. He would just have this distant look, and we’d know he was in his mind’s eye."

"I was on tour playing classical music when I found out he’d died," Jonah Cabral, talented young alto player and Speight's student, said. "Now I’m finding it hard to even touch my horn. He was my musical father. And he was always my goal, in terms of being the best musician I could be."

Read the remainder of the obituary here.