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 name is on the thing, but the reality of it is, when I get up there on stage, I'm part of a band. I'm part of a unit. It's like a basketball team.
Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized.
You're only as good as your last record.
I just kinda like playing. I don't necessarily go on tour to promote my albums. I'm on the road all the time. The fact that I have a new record is out is a coincidence.
Jazz music by its very nature is just a conglomerate of a lot of different kinds of music.
To me, the object of practicing is to allow you to play what you hear. But you're always hearing new things, so you never get to the end of it.
When I make records, I never listen to stuff after it's done. Ever.
I have pretty ecumenical tastes. I'm interested in a lot of different kinds of music, so I don't listen with a jaundiced ear to music because it's in a certain category, whether it's country or opera or hip-hop or bebop or whatever it is.
I look at the artistic process as like experiencing the world, channeling it through your personality and sending it back out there. That's the process.
In most of the stuff that I've done over the years as a sideman, I wasn't really a session musician, because to me, a session musician is a guy who makes his living in the studio, and I never really did that.
In regard to music, I just think that it's always best to have an attitude of being a perpetual student and always look to learn something new about music, because there's always something new to learn.
I think that that's the way the music grows and changes and becomes new and creative and vital. It's by synthesizing elements from all around it and not to maintain this kind of rigid myopic kind of tunnel vision, in a sense, trying to maintain a certain kind of purity, or whatever.
I'll just sit at the piano a lot an play like through different chord exercises and kind of just throwing my hands down on the piano from one chord to the next to see what happens.
As a melody instrument player, it's all about getting from one note to the next, and those intervals and how you navigate your way through these vertical structures of chords. You realize that everything's moving forward, and it's all linear.