A few hours before the local première of the new documentary “Listening to Kenny G,” its subject, Kenny G, the best-selling instrumentalist in American history, strolled around the shopping mall at Hudson Yards, the biggest mixed-use private real-estate development in American history, poised to delight passersby. He carried an instrument case and wore a snappy blue suit; as ever, his lush profusion of springy curls were neatly parted on the side. (“I know for a fact that if I cut my hair my career will go right down the toilet,” he says, in the film.) Near a garland-strewn escalator landing by a Uniqlo, he laid his case down, popped it open, and extracted a soprano saxophone—the same one, the documentary explains, that he’s played since high school, in the seventies. He did some confident improv, then segued into a smooth-jazzy “Deck the Halls.” Heads began to turn.
A young man from Brooklyn, whose parents were visiting from Georgia, waved. “Hey, Kenny!” he said cheerfully. Kenny nodded at them. As he finished “Deck the Halls,” he called after a woman with a riot of brown curls, wheeling a suitcase. “I like your hair!” he said. She didn’t notice. Another passerby, Liz Monte, was more impressed. “Oh, my goodness,” she whispered, with a slight Caribbean accent. “He was my first concert!” (Chicago, the nineties.) Monte, a massage therapist for the Milwaukee Bucks, was having a big week: “We’re here to play a game tonight; a couple days ago we went to the White House and met the President.” Now she was off to Lululemon. “Thanks, Kenny!” she said, from the escalator. A security guard took a video selfie; Kenny G played some licks into his camera. Next, he surveyed the “ambience” of a glassy foyer by Tod’s, snapping his fingers to sample the acoustics. “Not bad!” he said. “It’s really more about the vibe.”
A rapid-fire soprano-sax “Over the Rainbow” riff filled the air, and a crowd circled the spectacle from a respectful distance, looking alternately excited and confused. A tourist in a green poncho, visiting from North Carolina, took a video for her superfan husband; a backpack-wearing schoolboy with his mother got a fist bump; two business-casual Londoners, “looking at a few things” in New York for work pertaining to an entertainment company in Saudi Arabia, didn’t realize that they were also looking at Kenny G. “That’s mental. Absolutely mental!” one said. “I thought he was awfully good.” A Hudson Yards employee nervously asked what was going on; she, too, was startled to behold Kenny G in the foyer. The gathering’s boldest attendee, a fluffy white dog named Katsu (“It means, like, little chicken-pork fried cutlets?” his owner said), trotted into the circle, cocked his head, and stared, mesmerized; then he bounced up and embraced Kenny G’s pant leg. The crowd laughed.
“Listening to Kenny G,” just released on HBO Max, is directed by Penny Lane, and styled as a romp through both his popularity—he near single-handedly instigated the genre of smooth jazz (“When you hear that word ‘easy listening,’ it almost sounds bad,” he says)—and his being popularly scoffed at, like a Fabio of music. (The critic Ben Ratliff describes Kenny G’s sound as “a corporate attempt to soothe my nerves”; in an old “SNL” joke about Kenny G’s Christmas album, Norm Macdonald says, “Happy Birthday, Jesus! Hope you like crap!”) A few biographical details are surprising: early gigs as a sideman for Barry White, Liberace (“We never really hung out,” he said), and the circus; a breakthrough “Tonight Show” spot; the ubiquity of his song “Going Home” in China, where it is played on P.A. systems to mark the end of the workday. What does he love about music? “I don’t know if I love music that much,” he says in the film—what he loves is practicing. And golf.
The impromptu Kenny G party concluded outside, near the Vessel. Another crowd formed; a courier wearing cat-ear headphones got off his skateboard and took a video. Kenny G played “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to a baby in a stroller, who dozed off. (He’s got music that “makes the babies” and music that “puts them to sleep!” he says.) A young blond guy stopped in his tracks. “This is so dope,” he said. “I went to his concert way back in 2009, in Warsaw.” He was with his parents, who were visiting from Poland. Kenny G played “Songbird,” to oohs and ahs, thanked everyone, and smilingly made his way off, eager fans trailing him. “I pitched a Pied Piper Disney movie to Jeffrey Katzenberg once,” he mused, walking away. What did he hope viewers would take from his current movie? He thought for a second. “To inspire somebody who wants to be good at something,” he said. ♦
