There are two or three things you've got to know about Richard Raux:
He's a jazzman first and foremost. Out of necessity, or out of passion. Without holding back, with total generosity. You only need to hear him blowing into his saxophone once to understand just how he's burning with mad love for this tender yet violent, solemn yet easy-going free and joyously unreasonable music, which is - Jazz.
He's Creole. Although he was born 1945 in Périgueux, France, he spent his entire youth from age two onwards, on the island of Madagascar. This explains his love for métis or "mixed" music, swaying dance rhythms, cadences that move.
He is self-taught. He learned at the best school; that of his ears. He started off on drums in Jeannot Rabeson's band; the great pianist, the "locomotive" of Madagascan jazz. Listening carefully to him and later, to other great masters of jazz piano like Mal Waldron and René Urtreger, he learned and discovered his vocation as a saxophonist.
He's a tenor, and a good one. To say he studied sax would be misleading. Rather, the saxophone took hold of him, body and soul. His experience, ranging from Magma in 1970 to HAMSA MUSIC via Sonny Grey's Big Band, has turned him into a true musician, totally able to handle the difficult heritage of Coltrane. Today he can proudly claim this "horn culture" as his own, the one that is so dear to Rollins.
Music pours from his saxophone, sometimes in velvety-smooth waves and other times in a scorching flood of passion, intimately blending emotion, energy, and joy. This is jazz, which doesn't pretend to be what jazz once was or to be avant-garde, but simply "happening", now.