Kenny G popularly known as Kenneth Bruce Gorelick was born June 5, 1956 at Seattle, Washington to a Jewish family and grew up in the city’s Seward Park neighborhood, which is a centre of the city’s Jewish community. He’s an adult contemporary and smooth jazz saxophonist. His fourth album, Duotones, brought him breakthrough success in 1986.Kenny G is the biggest-selling instrumental musician of the modern era, with global sales totalling more than 75 million albums.
Kenny Gorelick started playing professionally with Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra in 1976. He recorded with Cold, Bold & Together (a Seattle-based funk group) and freelanced locally. After graduating from the University of Washington, Kenny G worked with Jeff Lorber Fusion, making two albums with the group. Soon he was signed to Arista, recording his debut as a leader in 1982. His fourth album, Duotones (which included the very popular “Songbird”), made him into a star. Soon he was in demand for guest appearances on recordings of such famous singers as Aretha Franklin,
Whitney Houston, and Natalie Cole. Kenny G’s own records have sold remarkably well, particularly Breathless, which has easily topped eight million copies in the U.S.; his total album sales top 30 million copies. The holiday album Miracles, released in 1994, and 1996’s Moment continued the momentum of his massive commercial success. He also recorded his own version of the Celine
Dion/Titanic smash “My Heart Will Go On” in 1998, but the following year he released Classics in the Key of G, a collection of jazz standards like “’Round Midnight” and “Body and Soul,” possibly to reclaim some jazz credibility.
Faith: A Holiday Album was released that same year, followed by a limited-edition re-release of the 1997 Greatest Hits disc. In 2002 Kenny G dipped into tropical territory with Paradise, which featured guest appearances by Brian McKnight and Chanté Moore. This was followed by a music video collection, another holiday album, entitled Wishes, and, in 2003, a second greatest-hits collection, Ultimate Kenny G. Perhaps in a bid to shake up his discography a bit, in 2004 Kenny G released At Last…
The Duets Album, which featured “duets” with LeAnn Rimes and Chaka Khan. Two years later, smooth jazz’s king of the soprano sax returned to a purely instrumental approach on the brassy, big-band-inspired albums Holiday Collection and I’m in the Mood for Love; 2006 was also the year the artist was dubbed the best golfer in music by Golf Digest, beating out Vince Gill for the number one spot. In 2008, Kenny G released the Latin-inspired Rhythm and Romance. The sax player next drifted toward R&B for 2010’s Heart and Soul, which featured guest vocals from Robin Thicke and Babyface. Scott Yanow, Rovi
Kenny G is married to Lyndie Benson, with whom he has two sons. The family lives in Malibu; California. He is an avid golfer and has a handicap index of +0.6. He has participated in the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am tournament seven times as of 2007 and teamed with Phil Mickelson to share the AT&T pro-am title in 2001 with the team of Tiger Woods and Jerry Chang.In the Golf Digest rankings of Top 100 in Music, according to golf handicap indexes of major musicians, he was first in 2006 and second in 2008. He is a member at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, California.
Kenny G is an aircraft pilot and has a De Havilland Beaver seaplane that he flies regularly. He is also an early investor in the Starbucks coffee house chain.
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