Norm Douglas

Equally skilled across soprano, alto, and tenor saxophone, Norm Douglas has shaped an ultra-smooth sound within West Coast jazz. Following a five-year break from performing, he picked up his horn again and has kept refining his craft ever since. In the mid-1980s he worked with southern California-based alto saxophone player Paul Carman, an experience that helped him develop a distinctive voice on the instrument. His first album, The First Time, appeared in April 2000 and was recorded in partnership with pianist/composer/producer Ron Kobayashi, who wrote six of its ten tracks. Douglas contributed two of his own melodic instrumentals, “I Can Do It” and “Tara’s Song,” highlighting his emerging abilities as a composer. A graduate of Youngstown State University in northeast Ohio, where he majored in music education, he performed on tenor saxophone with various ensembles in Cleveland and Pittsburgh during his student years. Although he spent a short time as a high school band director, he eventually stepped away from music to work as a salesman. Five years afterward, encouragement from friends prompted him to return to performing, and he has remained active ever since.