Micah Gough

My interest in music began when I was 3 years old. We had a programmable piano which, at an early age, I could make sound like a motorcycle going off in the distance.”

Listen to Micah Gaugh play.

After a brief stint as a piano student, Mr. Gaugh’s next musical milestone occurred when he was 14. “I was watching the pop group Sha Na Na on television and I loved the way one of them played saxophone. I begged and begged [my parents] to buy me a saxophone. Finally I wore them down. Two months later, I had a saxophone. Also, my mom had the record ‘Mercy Mercy, Mercy,’ by Cannonball Adderley. And once I had my sax, in a couple of days, I showed my mom that I could do Cannonball’s parts.”

Just short of graduating from Carnegie Mellon University, Mr. Gaugh learned that the pianist Cecil Taylor was looking for a saxophonist for a new orchestra. “So I left school and went to New York, tried out with Taylor and got the job. That lasted about a year. I have been freelancing since that gig, with one exception. In 2004, Arto Lindsay and I staged ‘Dr. Faustus Lights the Light,” by Gertrude Stein, at the Museum Island in Berlin. After that, I went back to freelancing. I now play avant pop, which is pretty much hip hop to jazz, and everything in between.”

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