Fellow musicians,

As I’m sure you all know, I’ve been associated with Yamaha for around twenty years now and it has been a great partnership. We’ve designed instruments, given clinics, enabled young players and most of all - made music together all over the world. I’ve had the good fortune to be playing on instruments that were created in a way that suited my own musical needs and carried my name.

Both the company and the individuals that I’ve liaised with have a dedication to their product and a love of music that has made it a joy to work together.

Playing music is a dynamic thing and the goal of every musician is to keep growing, developing new ideas and hopefully innovating when the inspiration takes you there. This sometimes means you need to make changes, even when what you are doing works perfectly well just the way it is. It’s because of this that I am making some changes to my musical world.

I’m working on some new instruments with the Austrian custom manufacturer Schagerl, instruments that are outside the parameters within which Yamaha do what they should do.

Instruments that are as “custom” as I’m recently wanting for my versatile playing style are better produced by a company who specialize in this style of manufacture – hence the move to Schagerl.

I’ll talk more about the new instruments later (when they are ready) but what is most important to me right now is to talk to all the players out there who have “James Morrison” Yamaha instruments. I don’t want anybody to misunderstand and think that somehow these horns are not as good as they were – or that they are somehow not the fine instruments I know they still are.

Everything I’ve ever said about them still stands;
I chose these instruments above all others and have played them for fifteen years or so. When you do two hundred concerts a year and play with the best musicians in the world, you don’t play anything other than what’s best for YOU. I’m very lucky that I’ve been in a position to have pretty well any instrument I want – and I’ve always played a Yamaha. If you have one of these as your own, you’re playing the instrument that has been my confident choice for most of my playing life.

James Morrison

The above letter has been reproduced as emailed to our store from Yamaha Australia