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
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.
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.
Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized and there's just no outlet, there's no venue for it, in terms of media.
Ninety-nine percent of the music that was of any interest to me when I was growing up came out of the black community.
I tend to play in a way that feels natural to me. To me that's authentic for myself. I play by where I'm led by some sense of where I feel I'm supposed to be.
Music is just kind of an expression of who I am. It's what I do.
You never get it figured out. You just keep playing.
Its all about finding the right note at the right place and knowing when to leave well enough alone. And that's a lifelong quest.
When you have an acoustic bass in the ensemble it really changes the dynamic of the record because it kind of forces everybody to play with a greater degree of sensitivity and nuance because it just has a different kind of tone and spectrum than the electric bass.
We were in Europe, and what's great about going to Europe, is you get a chance to hear a lot of really great music.
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 think the problem is when a genre or style becomes limiting, when it starts to define what you're going to do, then it becomes a problem.
We're living in an age now where that's the business model. And it's kind of hard to operate economically in that kind of climate because it stifles creativity.
Well I think that one of the things that I've learned over the years - some of it by experience and growth, and some of it just by the gradual physical falling away at certain things - that its really important to try to make less mean more.