Sax Martl and the full moon show in Steinegg

What do a saxophone, piano, bass, guitar, clarinet, drum, trumpet and accordion have in common? The answer is Sax Martl! Steinegg’s famed musician has mastered them all – and more still...

On the covered festival ground in South Tyrol’s Steinegg with its wonderful views of the Bolzano valley basin, there is almost always something going on! For a mountain village of only a little over 1,300 inhabitants there is a surprisingly large number of celebrations, festivals and performances, that are popular not only among holidaymakers, but also attract countless numbers of the villagers too.
An appearance by the “Vollmondband” (Full Moon Band) ensemble is always a musical and mischievous highlight in Steinegg’s calendar! The front-man of the highly talented musicians and actors, the multi-instrumentalist, Martin Resch, makes music, sings and talks with the best of them, and is never embarrassed by a practical joke.

Sax Martl, as Martin is known not only in Steinegg but throughout South Tyrol and beyond, was never an especially dedicated student at school, since discipline, sitting still and swotting were all alien to his mischievous nature. However, in contrast, he is a gifted improviser, something that he has shown off to great effect from his earliest years. Since the afternoon time at primary school was simply too precious to waste with school matters, he would blithely copy his homework from others the next morning on the school bus. Not without consequences, since he was usually caught, and as a draconian punishment repeatedly had to write new essays. Happily – as we should say today – the punishments were unsuccessful! Martin’s devotion was quite simply to other things; he remained true to himself and later on followed his heart when he sacrificed his civil engineering degree studies for his great love: music!

Perhaps music was even the first love of this Steinegg icon, beginning at the tender age of 14, when Martin joined the music society so that he could learn how to play the saxophone. And whilst his stage name still makes reference to this first instrument, in the years that followed more were added, so that today he could make a whole orchestra with the instruments that he plays. However, one thing that the Steinegg all-rounder seems to have been born with is the gift of the gab, with a tongue that is often loose, but always charming and sprinkled with verve and rhetorical skill. As the full package from his early 20s he went from gig to gig and if you listen to Sax Martl today as he talks about the happiness he derives from being a musician, then one cannot help but feel that it was not so much Martl who found the music as the music that found Martl. He always had enough talent, but the finishing touches were added in over seven years with the legendary and internationally successful band, “The Alpine Yuppies”, which even played as a royal dance troop at the birthday celebrations of Prince Albert of Monaco.

Since 2003, Sax Martl has been a solo musician, has recorded an album entitled “Sax Martl - the Party Tiger: 10 Years on the Road”, and plays in various bands, at weddings, in hotel lobbies as well as time and again at the Munich Oktoberfest. There, as he jokingly tells it, he even managed to save a German celebrity by using his nose! As he was about to make an appearance in a beer tent, he saw a woman looking as if she was about to fall down the stairs and hurried over without hesitation to help. But he was too late! The woman was in freefall! However at the very last moment Sax Martl reached her and caught the woman with his nose in her cleavage. As he looked up from her bosom, Verona Pooth, a German television personality, thanked him kindly for his heroic act.

But it makes no difference to Martin whether he is playing for famous people at the Oktoberfest or in his home village of Steinegg, since, as he says: “If people are having a ball, then you're bound to be happy, no matter where you're playing.” So he cultivates his musical roots in South Tyrol and above all in Steinegg, with, first and foremost, the Vollmondband being especially close to his heart. The band’s secret recipe is the deep friendship that has grown up over a quarter of a century between its members and the invigorating power of music and cabaret. “The greatest thing is to be able to pass on the energy of the music to the public. Then you get a lot back from them too,” says Martin. And anyone who has ever been to the festival ground in Steinegg, where so many celebrations, festivals and performances take place, will know exactly what Sax Martl is talking about.