An award-winning musician and San Francisco State University lecturer was killed when his vehicle was struck by multiple trains, officials said.
Andrew Speight, 58, died Thursday afternoon when his vehicle got trapped on the Caltrain tracks near Broadway Station in Burlingame. A northbound and a southbound train hit the vehicle, Caltrain officials said.
Speight was born in Sydney and moved to the United States to teach music. A prolific jazz musician, the alto saxophonist released a critically acclaimed album in 1999 with the Andrew Speight Quartet; it went on to win an Aria Award, Australia’s version of the Grammys.
“He lived the life an artist in pursuit of his muse which was in jazz music,” friend Simon Rowe told NBC Bay Area, “and [he was] constantly working on his playing, constantly learning to improve himself and with that, tirelessly creating community around the art form, both as a teacher and a mentor and an incredible alto saxophone player.”
Speight’s biography on the SF State School of Music site calls him “a clear-toned, hard-driving alto sax player — one of the Bay Area’s most lively and lyrical exponents of straight-ahead, joyous jazz.”
“Speight has been in the U.S. since the early 90s, leading jazz programs first at Michigan State University and now at San Francisco State University,” it goes on. “But most importantly, Speight has been blowing the doors off of every joint lucky enough to have him on the bandstand.”
