Kenny G has taken elevator music to the top floor, and he’s proud of it

If you sat next to Kenny G on a flight, what would you talk about? His music? His Guinness World Record? The fact that his songs have been the soundtrack for everything from first dances to corporate elevators? 

For one fan, the conversation took an unexpected turn. 

“I was sitting next to a girl on a flight last year, and she started telling me some intimate things about her sex life. And I’m thinking, ‘I didn’t ask you. I really don’t want to know,’” the sax player says in a call from Paris. “I asked her why she was telling me all this, and she said, ‘Well, I want to tell my boyfriend that I told Kenny G the things that we were going to do.’”

He pauses, laughs and says: “I did not expect that.” 

Effortlessly cool with his signature curls, Kenneth Bruce Gorelick was discussing his upcoming tour of South Africa.

Under his stage name he has become synonymous with smooth jazz, having serenaded the world with his soulful saxophone for decades. His journey started with a moment of pure fascination. As a youngster in Seattle, he was inspired by a sax player he saw on The Ed Sullivan Show. He started practising at the age of 10 and seven years later landed a gig with Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra.  

In 1982, Kenny G released his eponymous debut album. But he wasn’t chasing fame — he was chasing perfection and his smooth melodies weren’t just the soundtrack to dinner parties. His breakthrough came in 1986 with Duotones, the album that featured Songbird, a track inspired by his move from Seattle to Los Angeles. The song soared to No 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, proving that a saxophone solo could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with pop anthems.

From there, Kenny G became a household name. He played for presidents, duetted with artists such as Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton, Kenneth Brian “Babyface” Edmonds, Brian McKnight and Chanté Moore. His 1992 album Breathless became the best-selling instrumental album of all time, selling more than 15-million copies. In 1997, he set a Guinness World Record for holding a single saxophone note for 45 minutes, 47 seconds.

Kenny G even found himself in the world of hip-hop, delivering a soulful saxophone solo on Use This Gospel from Kanye West’s 2019 album Jesus is King. He has never felt the need to reinvent himself. If anything, he’s been stubbornly consistent. 

“I just kept playing the way I wanted to... What happens is that I go into my studio, I make my music and then I hand them the music all finished, and that’s the end of it. There’s no ‘Hey, why don’t you go back and change this?’ There’s none of that ever. I don’t allow it,” he says.

That same single-mindedness extends to what he listens to — or rather, what he doesn’t. Kenny G deliberately avoids other artists’ music, even in genres adjacent to his own. He says he knows who Hugh Masekela is but couldn’t name a song. If a smooth saxophone solo drifts through a restaurant or hotel lobby, he has to stop and think, Is that me? He can quickly tell when it’s a copycat artist trying to imitate his sound.  

“What’s the point of that? I’m already playing that, you’re not going to do it better than me, come up with something else,” he says.

The attitude is warranted. When we speak, it’s late afternoon and Kenny G has already put in three hours of practice.

“My saxophone and I have an amazing relationship,” he says, as if the instrument is an old friend, not some inanimate object. “Somehow we found each other, and somehow we make this beautiful music together.” Wherever he goes, he takes three saxophones — tenor, soprano and alto — each with a backup.

In the US, his music is synonymous with romance, Sunday brunches and luxury spas. In China, his song Going Home signals the end of the workday, piped through department stores at 5pm sharp. But in Paris? Not so much. Just this week he was bounced from a bar.

“My music is not popular here. I can go anywhere I want and nobody even talks to me — which is good and not so good because the other night I went out with a friend of mine, another sax player. We wanted to have a drink at a bar, but they wouldn’t let us in. We weren’t young enough or beautiful enough. I was saying to him, if we were in the US, we would not have this problem.” 

In South Africa? No wedding reception is complete without his sax, the cue that it’s time to eat. Be it Songbird, Going Home or Sentimental, when one of his tracks come on I’m immediately transported to a wedding buffet — plate of food in hand.

He laughs. “Great, so when you hear my music when we perform in South Africa, you’re going to get hungry. But so will I be.” 

Concert days follow a strict routine. If a show starts at 8pm he arrives at the venue by noon. He spends an hour rehearsing with one saxophone, takes a break to eat, then switches to another for a two-hour session. By 4pm, it’s time for the band’s soundcheck. He lets them settle in before joining for a 45-minute run-through. By 6pm, the prep is done. 

The next two hours are low-key — he gets dressed, chats with his team, maybe does a meet-and-greet. One thing that never changes? He won’t eat until after the show. Hunger, he says, sharpens his focus.

When Kenny G steps onto the stage in South Africa this October, he’s looking forward to performing for a “lively and enthusiastic” audience. He toured previously in 1998 and 2014, and fondly recalls the unique energy of South Africans, which, along with the unforgettable safari experiences, makes his visits here memorable.

But there’s another part of the world that holds a special place in his heart: Asia, a region he has visited nearly 100 times over his career. From Japan and Korea to China, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia, the fans can’t get enough of him. It’s here, he says, that certain songs — ones you won’t hear in South Africa — are cherished, giving each performance a distinct flavour that only his Asian audiences fully appreciate.

For Kenny G, his music is as much about the listener’s experience as it is about his own. Each melody holds a personal meaning for him — sometimes sparking a memory or a thought about someone special. But he’s careful not to share those reflections with his audience. When he’s on stage, he’s in his own world, lost in the music. He lets his fans interpret the sound however they wish.

“I start to play and then the melody reminds me of something. I never tell people what I’m thinking. I would never tell them. It’s always a nice feeling when I’m playing my concerts because I feel, like, people are watching me, but I’m in my own world with my own thoughts right now that nobody would ever know.”

At 68, his passion for music and dedication to his craft are as strong as ever. Whether his saxophone is setting the mood for romance, the perfect end to a long workday, or that unmistakable wedding buffet moment, he’s not just stringing notes together — he’s letting the audience write their own story.  

Kenny G will perform in Durban on October 1, in Cape Town on October 2 and in Pretoria on October 4.