>To be honest, my main beef with Kenny G and his music isn't really
>directed at him at all. It's at the bonehead Clive "Millivanilli" Davis
>and his bonehead executives at Arista who wish to market his music as
>"jazz." Please. Just because it's contemporary, and just because it's
>instrumental, the idiots call it "jazz." (Gee, John Williams composes
>contemporary instrumental music...is that jazz, too?) Kenny G's CORRECT
>category is "instrumental pop" or "adult contemporary." Kenny G. is great
>at what he does; he's a wonderful Instrumental Pop
>saxophonist and composer, but he is *not* a jazz musician,
<snip>
Yeah but there's also a lot of improvisation and solos in some tunes too,
that might have a blindfolded listener (who has not been told they were
Kenny G tunes) classify them in the "jazz-lite" category. Which IMHO is
still more jazz than "acid-jazz" ... if we use the amount of improvisation
as a basis for a tune's "jazziness". Most of his "hits" though, such as the
movie themes, are squarely in the instrumental pop category.
The Kenny G song that comes to mind right now is something called "Midnight
Motion" - can't recall exactly which album that was from. He was playing a
very nice tenor sax solo here and it's interesting that his muscular tenor
playing is so different from his wimpy soprano sax style. IMHO - it's when
he starts applying so much vibrato on his soprano sax that people get
irritated. This is the style he uses on his slow pop ballads... jest too
much vibrato for comfort. Unfortunately, to the masses, the Kenny G soprano
sax style has defined what a soprano sax is supposed to sound like.
I prefer straight serpentine soprano sax lines like Wayne Shorter used to
dish 'em out (or his disciple Branford Marsalis). A good reference point for
Marsalis running thru my head right now is his soprano noodling and the
instrumental break on Sting's "Englishman in New York". Ronnie Laws also
used to play a lot of good soprano sax (though I haven't heard too much from
him lately). Also, Grover Washington Jr. has a lot of good stuff
(ironically, one of Kenny G's biggest influences).
I have some old records of the Jeff Lorber Fusion from the 80's ... very
nice hip little jazz-fusion combo in the mold of what Yellowjackets is
probably doing today. Their sax player was this young guy Kenny Gorelick ...
then a white guy with an afro! I guess it was Clive Davis that told him to
get rid of the afro and grow his hair, and drop the "Gorelick".
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jim ayson [ jra@europa.com ] ... quezon city, metro manila, philippines
W3 Business Communications: website design and management [w3bc@best.com]
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