Roxanne Rolle

About Roxanne Rolle

Roxanne Rolle, Is a talented multi-instrumentalist, well versed and comfortable in all music genres. She has been performing professionally, both live and in studio for nearly all her life. Roxanne is a composer, song writer, lyricist, music arranger, recording and live sound engineer, and music producer.

She loves the creative process and believes that music in any style can be expressive and a beautiful release of all the things you hold inside. Music is the perfect balanced use of your brain hemispheres. She says “You engage your abstract mind via music’s vast pallet of colors that evokes the varied individual emotional responses people and the artist experience from the energy, tonality, density or sparsity the artist has put forth in their composition while simultaneously tapping into the analytical mind with the meter, texture, harmony and theory and all the identifiable and measurable facets that are involve in the creation of music”

Life Info:
Born on April Fool’s Day (that figures) in San Bernardino, California Roxanne is the youngest of three children. The family relocated from their home in Fontana, California to the Mojave Desert in the city of Victorville.

Music was always in the home while she was growing up. Her father, Pablo, was a mariachi musician and singer with a huge Baritone voice and her mother, Elisa, was a jazz drummer and had a lovely alto voice. Her older brother, Paul, played the clarinet, bass clarinet and was quite a good singer with a strong baritone voice and her sister, Nancy, was blessed with a velvety alto voice. Her parents were quite active in their community and often would large gatherings and parties at the home where many local musicians would attend and have long jam sessions into the wee hours of the morning.

Roxanne’s benefited from being the youngest by her family exposing her to a wide variety of music styles. Her father brought the traditional rancheras, cumbias and romanticos of his Mexican heritage and he had an affinity for Country & Western music. Her mother loved Big Band and Doo-wop and crooners like Johnny Mathis and Engelbert Humperdink. Big brother brought the modern pop, rock and funk while her big sister was always dancing to oldies and R&B.

All of these diverse styles lead Roxanne to believe there is great music in all genres, you just have to know what makes it that style. Her tastes in music were further influenced by her cousins on her mom’s side of the family. They had the Hard rock and Prog rock that really became central to forging her own musical identity apart from her siblings.

Roxanne’s first instrument was the clarinet when she was 9 years old. Her brother let her use his for elementary band since the family was not doing well financially at the time. The next instrument she picked up was drums. Being aa fan of the rock group KISS when in the 6th grad she wanted to pound the skins, man..LOL. But that proved frustrating for her in the school program. She was only allowed to play the snare drum and “Mary Had a Little FLAM” got old quick.

Then in her first year of junior high, she signed up for band again. On the night of orientation her brother went with her. When they went to the band room to meet the teacher, it was discover that Roxanne was NOT listed as a fully enrolled. There was no instrument assigned for her, leaving her on a waiting list. Big brother took the instructor aside and explained the financial hardships the family was going through causing them to change residences a lot, and thus Roxanne was registered late and could not choose an instrument since there was no way to know want school loaners would be available. Roxanne spoke up and said she wanted to play the drums. The teacher said he had a lot drummers already and there were no practice drums she could take home. Her brother asked what instruments were available and the instructor listed off baritone, trombone, alto sax…Paul stopped the teacher right there, and said the sax. Roxanne didn't want to play that, and her brother told her “You are going to play the sax. That’s what I wanted to play but they didn’t have it available so I got stuck on the clarinet. You are going to play saxophone.” Roxanne sighed and accepted the instrument, The Instructor was amused by this dynamic and chuckled and stated “Well, It looks like that is decided” followed by Roxanne’s under breath comment, "I guess so”. She played that alto saxophone in Jr. High Beginner Band. It proved to be a good fit for her as she was quickly moved into the advanced band after only one semester.

The next school year the school made JAZZ band available and the instructor hand picked the students he to be the section leaders. Roxanne was asked to be his Alto Sax I, and this started a major shift in herd career ambitions of wanting to be an Architect. The discovery of Improvisation sparked her creativity and a thirst for music knowledge. The desire to write music became a focus for her.

Since the sax is a monophonic instrument, it made complete understanding of chordal structure somewhat difficult to completely understand. Unfortunately, the typical composer’s tool, the piano, was too expensive for the family to buy. But her father played the guitar, and he had an old acoustic he let her use.

The guitar was a catalyst for the budding composer. It lead to learning other string instruments, and eventually the keys. The rest they say is history…at least history only she knows. Someday all will know how this story will layout and let’s hope it is a wonderful history to recant in the pages of lore that is music.