The tracks are almost equally divided between soprano and tenor sax, with one song, “Two of a Kind,” featuring him on both, duetting with himself, a slight, unintended hint of Seals & Crofts’ “Summer Wind” wafting through, while the wistful, airy “Moonlight” finds him taking a rare turn on alto sax, the instrument on which he first learned to play. New Standards continues the musical path that has seen Kenny G sell 75 million albums around the world, looking back to the classic ‘50s and ‘60s jazz ballads for inspiration, updating them with new studio technology, such as the digital ability to piece together songs note by note from different performances. Somewhere in the middle, they found something they were looking for and liked.” And it touched a great many people who weren’t into traditional jazz, pop or R&B. Recalling his music spawning the “smooth jazz” phenomenon, Kenny explains, “I’m proud of the fact it was a new style of music that no one was either playing or writing at the time. He was also one of the original 10 investors in his Seattle hometown Starbucks Coffee. The feature probes some of the many Kenny G accomplishments, from his song “Going Home” being used as the official end-of-work-day anthem in China to his skills as a golfer and airline pilot. “I didn’t realize how strong the message was until I saw the finished film,” says Kenny, who has both the best-selling instrumental album of all time in the Diamond-selling, 12-times-platinum 1992 Breathless, earning him his only Grammy Award among 15 nominations, and the Guinness Book of World Records mark for longest sustained note ever recorded on the saxophone.
After director Penny Lane’s critically acclaimed HBO documentary, Listening to Kenny G – which humorously reconsiders the purist critical backlash to his music – and a demand performance on Kanye West’s Grammy-winning Jesus Is King album, it’s now cool to not only be Kenny G, but admit you’re a fan of his as well. His latest release, New Standards, the title of his 19th studio album, fifth for Concord Records and first since 2015’s Brazilian Nights, could well be used to describe his four-decade body of work, a vision of jazz that helped launch both a musical genre and radio format. The sound of Kenny G’s saxophone is as iconic as his curly coif indeed, both are instantly recognizable.
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