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Tomas Sorensen wrote on June 27, 2009 report
I met Anthony Ortega in the 1950's. I don't remember the exact year but I remember that at that time he was already an accomplished multi-reed player. He was very tight with Gabe Baltazar and I knew them both. They lived, as I remember, on Melrose almost at the corner of Vermont and close to LACC which was at that time a hotbed of really good players. That's where I first heard Gabe. I wasn't in college yet but I'd go over to LACC whenever I could to listen to the band or the jam sessions they held in the piano bungalows. After hearing Gabe i asked him if he would give me some classes. He said he'd help me out and invited me to the place on Melrose not just for the classes but to meet Tony, who in the end gave me more classes than Gabe did.
Tony was, and I am sure still is, everything positive you could find in a person. I have never met a kinder soul than Tony he was sympathetic, gracious and completely without ego. He was humility personified. He never mentioned all the things he had done. It was Gabe who told me about his time with Lionel Hampton , Dizzy and many other great players that Tony had played with.
I took me many years to realize what a fine teacher he was and his effect on me. I have had quiet periods in my life where I had to put the horn down for any number of reasons. Whenever I go back to playing after a long lay-off the first thing I do is take out an old dog-eared copy of " Universal Method For Saxophone" by Paul DeVille that Tony gave me back then. It's the only copy I have ever had and it even has some of his doodles on the cover. I just open it up to those exercises he gave me more than 50 years ago and in a short time i am ready to roll. Is that a teacher of what? 50 years later his influence is a strong as it was in 1957.
Tony Ortega "the Batman" deserves way more recognition than he's ever gotten, as a musician, a creator, an improviser, a teacher and as a super decent human being. They don't make them like that anymore and they probably wont ever again.
