David Sanborn
David Sanborn
David Sanbornis an American alto saxophonist. Though Sanborn has worked in many genres, his solo recordings typically blend jazz with instrumental pop and R&B. He released his first solo album Taking Off in 1975, but has been playing the saxophone since before he was in high school. Sanborn has also worked extensively as a session musician, notably on David Bowie's Young Americans...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSaxophonist
Date of Birth30 July 1945
CityTampa, FL
CountryUnited States of America
I do this because I love it, and at the end of the day, the fact that I can make a living at all doing this, I'm grateful for.
I don't see any way out of that because I think the audience as a whole is not being served and isn't getting excited about going out an buying CD's, and for that matter, going out and going to concerts.
It's tough to be in a relationship with a musician, because it reads sometimes as this ego and self-involvement when it's really just concentration and focus.
The audience is interested in different stuff, not the same old, same old.
It's always difficult to define what jazz is or what jazz isn't. To me, the only definition that I can think of is it's music where a lot of different elements are played at the same time. The harmonic, the melodic... You're pushing the boundaries on every level. That could be true of rhythm and blues as well. I'm a musician.
No, it's unfair to the musicians and the people that work for the record labels, because they're scrambling to make their numbers every month or three months, or they're out of a job.
And consequently there's not a lot of artist development, very little encouragement to take chances on anything, to do anything new or different. Same old, same old.
And record companies are always quick to blame piracy and the Internet but I think that's only a small part of it. I think it's the corporate bottom line mentality.
And I think that in the case of these last few - the musicians I had - the reasons I used the same people I did on the two albums was I really felt that these guys were not only great players in their own right but really understood the concept of functioning as a band.
I think the kind of chronology of the whole thing was that I was making records in the 70's and 80's that used pop production values, but instrumental music; like improvising with R&B kinds of song structures, but with improvisation in them, and pop production values.
I think the problem is when a genre or style becomes limiting, when it starts to define what you're going to do, then it becomes a problem.
I think with the acoustic bass it allows you to explore the fuller dynamic range.
Well I think that one of the things that I've learned over the years - some of it by experience and growth, and some of it just by the gradual physical falling away at certain things - that its really important to try to make less mean more.
I was actually in an iron lung for about a year, and then I was paralysed from the neck down for another year after that. So I spent a lotta time just lying down as a kid. And some of my earliest memories from then are of listening to the radio.