If you’ve ever been to a jazz concert, you’ve probably heard beautiful deep tones from the saxophone section. This is thanks to Liam Packard and his baritone saxophone.
Packard comes from a musical family, with both of his parents classically trained, his mom trained in voice and his dad trained in organ performance. He began playing saxophone in middle school. “Most people start in middle school or late elementary school, however I didn’t go to any elementary school that offered a music program other than a class where we played recorders,” he says. When asked why he picked saxophone, he said simply, “It was the instrument with the most swagger.”
He now resides as the one and only baritone saxophone in the Advanced Jazz Band here at Timpview, getting many solos throughout the years, including a gorgeous feature this year on Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady,” one of the pieces the band plays at jazz festivals.
Packard takes his biggest musical inspiration from the genre of jazz and the way “you can follow someone’s thought process and journey through it.” He also draws inspiration from his peers, letting them push him as he strives to achieve excellence alongside them.
On May 13th, Packard will be performing his concerto, “Vongole!” by Satoshi Yagisawa at the Timpview Band Concert, accompanied by the Wind Symphony. When asked what led him to choose this concerto, he said, “I honestly didn’t have a lot of options for baritone saxophone concertos, this was just the first I found that fit the time restrictions, but I still like it a lot!” It goes to show how sometimes your path picks you rather than you picking it.
Along with saxophone, Packard is also a percussionist, playing snare drum in the Timpview Marching Band for two years, serving as Snare Section Leader in the 2025 season, and recently finished his final season of Provo City Indoor Percussion.
His musical accomplishments across the board are extremely impressive. He earned a 5 on the AP Music Theory exam and performed at State Solo and Ensemble while here at Timpview. Beyond that, he plays tenor saxophone for the Blue Note Band, a Utah County-based big band that is part of the Mountaintop Music Institute. And, as mentioned in Joss McFarland’s article, Packard is collaborating on a show to be performed by the Timpview Marching Band in the coming years. On top of all of that, he got into Berklee College of Music, the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world.
Once his time is finished here at Timpview, Packard plans to go to the University of Utah to major in music performance. One of his biggest goals is to make his future career enjoyable and music related, believing that “If you fall in love with the music, the work towards it becomes easy.”
When asked if there was any note he wanted to leave us with, he said, “I’m very grateful for the rare opportunity to play a concerto and share my musical voice with everyone. I’m lucky to have such great teachers like Bolton and Bowman who really helped my dreams become a reality.”
Liam Packard is a brilliant musician who truly loves what he does and puts his heart and soul into it. Come May 13th to see his beautiful performance, and if you want, come to the Jazz Concert on May 4th to see him and so many of the other people who’ve been featured in this column do what they do best, play amazing music. And when you do, listen for those deep tones coming from the saxophone section, and realize that you know a lot more about where they’re coming from now.
