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
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 basically played the music that I felt all my life, and whatever label people put on it is kind of really none of my business.
I have a certain temperament, a disposition that I think lends itself to not playing outside the lines that much. But I do test the boundaries, certainly, and break one or two of my own. Some people are mystified by it, but not me.
I think Norah Jones is a perfect example. Here's somebody who was playing the music she wanted to play and did it with some conviction, and it happened to be at a moment in time when there was a highly receptive audience for that kind of music.
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 did full demos of all the songs at home, and then I took the demos into the studio and played them for everybody, and we then went ahead and did live versions.
If you're playing with somebody from another idiom, you can't react to them in the same way that you react to somebody that is closer to your idiom. You don't fall into the same habits. You find a new way of communicating.
They thought there was a market out there for instrumental music. They were trying to broaden their roster of artists. I got in on that.
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.
I'm moved by a lot of different kinds of music, whether it's pop music or R&B or straight-ahead jazz or free or opera or music from all parts of the world.
I'm trying to kind of keep my mind a blank for a while, and just see what filters in, and be non-specific about what I listen to.
I listen to some things that I've done, and I think they're pretty good, but that's not one of them.
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 didn't try to think what my audience wanted and then make the music accordingly. I made the music and hoped that as many people liked it as possible.