Do you love sexaphones or any music instrument instrument? Kenny G, he’s always been a strong live performer and many people who’ve just heard the hits on the radio or in the grocery story or in the doctor’s office or, well, everywhere, are not hearing or seeing the whole package. “Live, anything goes,” he says. “Live, there’s a million notes being played. The fun part of playing live is that it’s all about getting the dynamics of the lows and the highs and the fasts and the slows.”
Even then Kenny G is not there to give a clinic—for fans, for musicians or for critics. “I’m not going to give them my 32nd note exercise pattern. It’s not going to sound good and there’s no point. The point would be if I was doing an instructional record, say, here’s this exercise or that exercise. Other than that, it doesn’t sound musical to me.”He does take his exercises seriously and he readily explains his motivation as well as his methodology. “To me practicing is two parts. One part is that you’ve got to get that saxophone and mouthpiece in your mouth. You have to. Otherwise you lose the muscle control. It’s a physical thing. It’s hours of practicing. I’ll turn on a golf tournament and watch while I’m playing my saxophone. That way I’m going to play longer and stronger.”
The second part is all about the technique. “It’s like a gym,” he explains. “You’re exercising. I play every one of my exercises in every key and I play them slow or I play them fast. I try to circular breathe them. Sometimes I go like 15 minutes without taking my mouthpiece out of my mouth because I’m circular breathing a bunch of exercises. When I’m done with that, it’s like I take a 5 minute break now. That’s how you work it. So that when I play live, nothing is holding me back from what I want to do with the saxophone.”
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