a clarinet into a competition at the age of 15. He subsequently studied performance on those two instruments as well as voice at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.

Sax faced many brushes with death. As a child, he once fell from a height of three floors, hit his head on a stone and was believed dead. At the age of three, he drank a bowl full of acidic water, mistaking it for milk, and also swallowed a pin. He received serious burns from a gunpowder explosion