This was followed by a music video collection, another holiday album, entitled Wishes, and, in 2003, a second greatest-hits collection, Ultimate Kenny G. In 2002 Kenny G dipped into tropical territory with Paradise, which featured guest appearances by Brian McKnight and Chanté Moore. He also recorded his own version of the Celine Dion/Titanic smash “My Heart Will Go On” in 1998, but the following year he released Classics in the Key of G, a collection of jazz standards like “‘Round Midnight” and “Body and Soul,” possibly to reclaim some jazz credibility.įaith: A Holiday Album was released that same year, followed by a limited-edition re-release of the 1997 Greatest Hits disc. The holiday album Miracles, released in 1994, and 1996’s Moment continued the momentum of his massive commercial success. his total album sales top 30 million copies. Kenny G’s own records have sold remarkably well, particularly Breathless, which has easily topped eight million copies in the U.S.
Soon he was in demand for guest appearances on recordings of such famous singers as Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, and Natalie Cole. His fourth album, Duotones(which included the very popular “Songbird”), made him into a star. Soon he was signed to Arista, recording his debut as a leader in 1982. After graduating from the University of Washington, Kenny G worked with Jeff Lorber Fusion, making two albums with the group. He recorded with Cold, Bold & Together (a Seattle-based funk group) and freelanced locally. Kenny Gorelick started playing professionally with Barry White‘s Love Unlimited Orchestra in 1976. However, because he is listed at the top of “contemporary jazz” charts and is identified with jazz in the minds of the mass public, he is classified as jazz.
Because he does not improvise much (sticking mostly to predictable melody statements), his music largely falls outside of jazz. He’s a fine player with an attractive sound (influenced a bit by Grover Washington, Jr.) who often caresses melodies, putting a lot of emotion into his solos. While an engineered “duet” with the late Louis Armstrong on “What a Wonderful World” took a lot of heat-enlisting jazz history’s greatest heavyweight in a bid to support the leading light of the oft sneered-at smooth-jazz genre-it’s unlikely that the highbrow jazz world’s umbrage has done much to hurt the album’s popularity.A phenomenally successful instrumentalist whose recordings routinely made the pop, R&B, and jazz charts during the 1980s and ’90s, Kenny G‘s sound became a staple on adult contemporary and smooth jazz radio stations. There’s also Christmas and New Year’s fare sprinkled in, and more cameos from George Benson, Peabo Bryson, and Earth, Wind & Fire. The soprano sax showman’s earliest ballad breakthroughs “Songbird” and “Silhouette,” his instrumental rendition of “My Heart Will Go On,” the mechanized funk of “Against Doctor’s Orders,” the cover of Average White Band's “Picking Up the Pieces” with David Sanborn, and his catchy Chaka Khan version of Christina Aguilera's “Beautiful” are all points plotting the smooth-jazz star's trajectory. Kenny G’s music has been so ubiquitous since the early '80s that it’s hardly surprising The Essential Kenny G plays out almost as an unwitting pop-culture chronicle.