Jeff was getting ready to go into the fusion sound, and he had a band that could work for less money than I was charging. One night, after paying the guys their money, Thara Memory let me know that Jeff had a few words with the club owner, saying he was starting his own band. Everybody’s ears opened around town, but these guys…they were hustlers, especially Jeff Lorber. What happened was that we started to change. Portland drummer laureate Mel Brown, the Motown vet who kept the beat for a cavalcade of stars (Diana Ross, Tommy Chong, Martha Reeves, the Temptations) before returning home in the ‘70s to reignite the local jazz scene, spoke with WW about hiring a hardworking young horn player to jam with his band decades ago. Still, while Portland cannot claim him as our own, the path that brought the University of Washington accounting student to the attention of major record labels arguably begins in Puddletown. To some extent, the former Kenneth Gorelick could’ve come from anywhere, but the early Starbucks investor’s Seattle origins do seem especially apropos. This even-handed portrait wonders instead just how an awkward noodler spun platinum from a moribund medium, and why so many, many critics took objection. While most biographies of living legends focus on either vicariously reliving the triumph of artistry over family, country and economy, or relishing a salacious peek behind the music, Listening to Kenny G isn’t particularly interested in explaining the ways fortune found a hyper-ambitious man blessed with a perfect elevator pitch. New HBO documentary Listening to Kenny G, which won rave reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival, expects you’re already familiar with the much-maligned sax god and, absent any revelations, asks you to consider the man within the meme.
Likely the world’s most famous instrumentalist and certainly its most successful, with some 75 million albums sold, Kenny G effectively birthed smooth jazz as a marketable format and forever earned the loathing of genre purists.
Personnel: Jeff Lorber, keyboards, bass, guitar Mike Stern, guitar, vocals (9) Jimmy Haslip, bass Vinnie Colaiuta, Dave Weckl, Gary Novak, drums Dave Mann, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, flute, synthesizer Bob Franceschini, saxophone Chelsea Maull, vocals (9) Leni Stern, N’goni (2).Kenny G (HBO) By Jay Horton Novemat 9:00 pm PST A bit more focus wouldn’t have hurt, though.Įleven: Righteous Nu Som Jones Street Motor City Big Town Slow Change Tell Me Ha Ha Hotel Rhumba Pagan Runner. This first collaboration between Lorber’s group and Stern finds all involved engaged amid explorations of jazz-adjacent sounds. Although it might sound more like prog than jazz, the tune goes deep and is a welcome contrast to tracks like the wacky “Ha Ha Hotel.”Ī key motif of Eleven is urbanity: “Big Town”-a tune by Lorber and his co-producer, bassist Jimmy Haslip-is a downtown cruiser, marked by the interplay between co-leaders, as Stern slides in and out of the keyboardist’s fluid theme. The album’s centerpiece-and longest track-is the guitarist’s majestic “Slow Change,” evoking the classic rock of Procol Harum in its stately riffs, while featuring the guitarist’s pyrotechnics. But the oddball bit still is largely mesmerizing. At first, it seems both throwaway and anomaly, and its fadeout is lame.
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The strangest cut here is “Rhumba Pagan,” a collaboration featuring otherworldly vocals, an assertive Lorber, tart horn accents and Stern at full tilt.
It’s ringing on the Metheny-influenced “Nu Som,” grazes the blues on the swaggering “Jones Street” and tightens up on “Motor City,” Lorber’s funky tribute to Detroit. Lorber shifts from piano to organ on several tunes, and Stern’s guitar tone changes according to the mood of each piece. Mike Stern-Jeff Lorber Fusion Eleven (Concord Jazz)Ī variety of atmospheres makes Eleven, a joint effort by fusion veterans Jeff Lorber and Mike Stern, both unpredictable and entertaining.įramed by Lorber’s upbeat “Righteous” and “Runner,” a buoyant piece that spotlights Stern, this journey through texture never loses momentum.
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