Klarinet Archive - Posting 000405.txt from 2000/06
From: Kenneth Wolman <kwolman@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Attacks on musicians by musicians
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 09:26:44 -0400
At 09:24 AM 6/10/00 -0400, Georgette Calzati wrote:
>I think the reason Kenny G is so popular because no one else is like him.
>His music can't really get classified with the likes of Joshua Redman or
>Richard Elliot; one type of music. It can't really go next to Kirk Whalem,
>Dexter Gordon, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Cannonball Adderly, John
>Coltrane or other players like that. Can someone think of at least one
>player everyone has heard of that can get classified with Kenny G? Najee? No
>
>Face it. He's different and that is what makes him so popular. I'm sure
>that he just loves playing music and he has found his niche in the music
>world. I say good for him.
I think we've been over the Kenny G business lots of times here: this guy
seems to come around about twice a year. The fact Pat Metheny attacks him
is about as significant as Keith Jarrett's over-the-top attack on Wynton
Marsalis in last May's _Jazz Times_: that is, it probably will have no
impact whatsoever on who listens to Kenny G's music. Also, it probably
will further confirm that Metheny and Jarrett, superlative musicians though
they may be (Jarrett to me is a living music lesson in phrasings and
innovations I could never achieve if I'd stuck with the clarinet from 1958
until now), have developed reputations for being (ahem) difficult. Perry
Ritter, who fixes Eddie Daniels' clarinets, said to ME (hardly a
significant customer), "Eddie's not nearly as big an asshole as he used to
be." That is the word I've also read when applied to Jarrett, and for all
I know it might also be used to describe Metheny, who for me is only a name
at the moment. Hell, I've heard it used to describe _me_ more than once,
and I'm likely to hear it again. But since I'm unlikely to have dinner
with Metheny, Jarrett, or Daniels anytime in this life, I'm really not
concerned with their personalities. And people's estimates of me come down
to "consider the source."
Jarrett attacked Marsalis for "not swinging" and having absolutely no jazz
sense, i.e., for perpetrating a fraud. I wonder if people attack Jarrett
for recording Bach's Goldberg Variations, a recording I happen to adore,
probably because I have no sense of how Bach should be played:-|. Apres
Landowska, le Deluge? The attacks on Kenny G are of a different
sort. Personal recollection: six years ago I spent five months working at
a place in Purchase, NY where they piped "soft jazz" into the cafeteria at
all hours. Invariably there was an awful lot of soprano sax stuff, and it
all seemed to be Kenny G, and no matter what tune it was, everything
sounded the same. It was like listening to Gary Puckett and the Union Gap
back in the late 1960s: Puckett had a fantastic voice but he rerecorded the
same crappy songs over and over. Same melody line, same chord structure
and patterns, same self-pitying lyrics, same everything. Kenny G has an
extraordinary technique on a fiercely difficult instrument to play in tune
much less brilliantly. There have been stories told here in years past
that when Kenny G was a college student, he used to regularly sit in with
"real" jazz players and blow them off the stage. I surmise, then, that
Kenny Gorelick made a conscious choice to play the kind of music he plays
because he wishes to make a living at it rather than set up as a CPA, the
occupation for which he was trained. Do I blame him? Not a bit. Like
Georgette, I also say Good for him. But do I want to listen to his
music? No thank you. Put Jane Ira Bloom in front of me, however, and I
will worship.
Ken
--------------------------------------------------------
Kenneth Wolman kwolman@-----.com
11 Broadway, New York, NY 10004 212-425-4200, x. 363
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