If you’ve been following this series of posts, you might have realised that almost all my mentors have been men. Despite the progress made in the last few decades, women still face significant barriers to enter and thrive in the music industry. For this reason, I lead projects like Time For My Music to support female musicians and close the gap. This situation also makes me cherish my fellow women in music, and treasure the opportunity of working with them and learning from them.

Due to this, I’m very happy to have the chance to talk about Anna Brooks today. She is a successful professional saxophonist who I had the fortune to have as a sax tutor after Mark Bunney. She’s also an international touring artist, music arranger, music director, and singer.

Thanks to Anna, I finally got around to get my Grade 8 in saxophone, which I was very pleased to achieve. This wasn’t the only challenge she helped me overcome. In fact, her guidance actually gave me the tools to face challenges within music in general. To this day, I apply her teachings to approach pieces that require a high level of skill or are generally complex. She is great at improvisation, and also at finding alternative fingering, ways and keys to play the sax. Under her tutelage, I improved by leaps and bounds.

Besides being my mentor, Anna has also been a colleague and a friend. She has transcribed songs for me. I’ve known her children, now adults, since they were quite young. We spoke about our shared experiences being women in the music industry for my podcast, Success Beyond The Score. You can watch or listen to the episodes that feature her on YouTube: How Being Self Taught Rocks! and The Parenting Puzzle.

If you want to watch Anna in action, have a look at this video of her playing with Jools Holland. She owns the stage!

If you want to learn what Anna taught me, plus everything else I’ve gathered during my successful music career spanning decades, you can inquire here for sax lessons and here for 1:1 coaching sessions about music business.