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
My whole contention, and my feeling in general about radio is, not just jazz radio, or smooth jazz radio, or whatever-radio in general is, I would like to see a little more variety within each one station.
Jazz music by its very nature is just a conglomerate of a lot of different kinds of music.
Jazz music should be inclusive. Smooth jazz to me rules out a certain kind of drama and a certain tension that I think all music needs. Especially jazz music, since improvising is one of the cornerstones of what jazz is. And when you smooth it out, you take all the drama out of it.
You never get it figured out. You just keep playing.
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.
I think ticket prices are too high, but it costs so bloody much money to get anything together anymore.
I sat in with them, and I remember their jaws dropped. I could actually play. I had some degree of sense of time.
People who really understood the use of space and the fact that the sound and the silence are of equal weight and that what you're doing is really manipulating space. It's the same as a painting except that you're doing it aurally.
I'm somebody that pretty much operates by instinct, and I kind of have to follow my instincts.
Mostly because I don't really feel that I have a methodology.
My recollection of listening to radio was listening to a personality on the radio play music that he was connected with, and having a wide variety of music to play.
My manager and I had been talking about trying to do a TV show. There was a series of shows back in the '50s, where they'd get a bunch of musicians together and they'd jam.
All the music that I've made in the past I've believed in. I think some of it has been more commercially successful than others, but it wasn't premeditated.
When you see the same familiar faces, it's nice when you get a chance to play with the same musicians. You start to develop this shorthand so everybody knows where you're at and where you're going, but then again, there are always surprises. But the more people are comfortable with the material, the more free you can be with the music.