Saxophonist Len Yaeger used to be crippled by anxiety on stage.
It didn't help when he first met Ruben Haugen, a famed Twin Cities woodwind player and teacher, at a gig. Haugen was forceful and demanding about getting the material right. "I was quite afraid of him," Yaeger recalled.
That changed several years later, when Yaeger took private lessons from Haugen. "He gave me a confidence to play that I never had in my life before," Yaeger said.
Haugen, who had studied under one of the world's foremost saxophonists and passed his knowledge down to hundreds of area musicians, died July 15 at age 94.
In his eight decades as a professional musician, including 63 years as a university-level teacher, Haugen, of Burnsville, left a sonic mark on the Midwestern music scene.
Haugen was born into a musical family in 1922 in Thorne, N.D. His father was a violinist who traveled the Midwest vaudeville circuit. Haugen taught himself clarinet by ear, and at 10 he joined his father on tour.
During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army in the Philippines and Japan. When he wasn't in combat, he was playing clarinet. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in music at MacPhail College of Music and was hired by the college to head the woodwind department upon his graduation in 1951.
He also picked up an interest in the saxophone, especially a classical strain that was developing in France. In 1960, he was one of only three Americans accepted to study classical saxophone with Marcel Mule at the Paris Conservatory. Mule, a pioneer in the field, was second in stature only to Adolphe Sax, inventor of the instrument.
