Dave Koz and Friends
Summer Horns with Dave Koz & Friends
With his newly released album, Summer Horns II A To Z, Dave Koz and Friends, including returners alto saxophonist Gerald Albright and tenor saxophonist Richard Elliot plus new additions Aubrey Logan on trombone and vocals and Rich Braun on trumpet, put their own spin on 11 well-known tunes.
Dave Koz
In the same vein as the first Summer Horns album, fans get to see and hear some of the most talented artists in the jazz world reimagining some of the world’s favorite classic songs like “More Today than Yesterday” by the Spiral Starecase and Natalie Cole’s “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love).” Summer Horns II A To Z, was released recently to great acclaim, and the band began a run of shows starting in Clearwater, Florida.Recently, award winning sax player Dave Koz spoke with Rawckus about the newly released album, the second annual Summer Horns tour, how it’s easier to come out as gay than gray, and much more.
Dave Koz: We just got back last night from the first weekend of our Summer Horns tour which went great. Yes, the last couple of weeks have been crazy. This weekend we started in Clearwater, Florida then went on to Atlanta and then to Minneapolis on the third day. I have family in Minnesota so I stayed behind an extra day to visit with them. This was the first three of our 30 shows across the United States in support of our new album!
What seemed to be the reception from the audience at your first weekend of shows?
Dave Koz: Very rare we get to do something like this where you have all of these wonderful headline artists on one stage and I know the audience really appreciates that. Reception from audience has been great. Louder and more appreciative than usual, I think because if you’re a fan of this music then getting to see all of these artists that have been around for like 30 years and doing our own things... there’s a lot to be grateful for with our careers. All these artists come and we’re all hanging and on vacation for a week with our fans and guests and there is this real camaraderie between artists and the people who come on the cruise and something special happens. And that is starting to happen in the live area now as you don’t get to see all that talent on stage very often playing together. You might see a bunch of different artists paying on same bill but not performing together.
What kind of feedback have you been getting on the album thus far?
Gotten a lot of great feedback on the album. People seem to be getting it. This is a very strange time for recordings and on the music biz side of things in terms of how people consume music whether that be Pandora, Spotify, iTunes, the people who still buy CDs... It’s such a changing world now. A lot of people find new releases on social media and a lot of people just listen on YouTube. There are so many ways of getting the music these days and we kind of have to surf that way and the best way to promote new music is doing it live.
Despite being a sequel to the 2013 release of Summer Horns, how is this album different? How has your music evolved?
We released that first album in 2013 and it was kind of an out-of-the-box success and the tour did great and we did another summer of touring and toured two years on that and got a Grammy nom and sold a lot of records. Mindy Aber couldn’t do this version right now so it opened the door to create a new sound and it was “horns,” not “sax,” so we could introduce brass. We enlisted Rich Braun, an all-time great trumpeter and producer. We wanted to make an album this time that celebrated that sound more specifically. The last one was more broad and more about the late ‘60s and ‘70s when horn bands were popular.
Dave Koz
Tell me about your current Friends band. I know alto saxophonist Gerald Albright and tenor sax player Richard Elliot are returnees and there are two new additions -- Rich Braun on trumpet and Aubrey Logan on the trombone and vocals.
We have a lot of talent on this crew with Gerald and Rich (Elliot) who were a part of this five years ago on the first Summer Horns album and tour. Now we have newcomers trumpeter Rich Braun and the amazing trombone player Aubrey Logan. It’s exciting to have her with us. We’re kind of introducing her to the jazz world. But the other stars of this album and the tour really are the arrangers who wrote the notes for us. If we had been left to do so with our own devices, it would be chaos. Having arrangers like Greg Adams, who’s worked with artists like Tower of Power, Tom Scott, who has a history with the likes of Michael Jackson and Steely Dan, and Gordon Goodwin who is one of the greatest arrangers of all time. The arrangers were the real stars of the show. With the right notes, the sound is larger and more powerful.
The arrangers were the real stars of the show. With the right notes, the sound is larger and more powerful.
Which song are you most excited about from the album’s track list?
The fourth track led to the addition of “From A to Z” on the album title. It’s a generational mashup of 1930’s song “Take the ‘A’ Train” by Billy Strayhorn and made famous by Duke Ellington, and “Roc Boys (And the Winner Is)” from another famous New Yorker, Jay-Z. These two songs are on opposite ends of the spectrum, as are these artists, stylistically and generationally, but the horn sections in both glue it all together.
I saw a short statement on Twitter you made in January : “over the last couple days it's increasingly hard to stay quiet. It hurts my heart. For now, that's all I'm saying. This latest one hurts on so many levels.” How have recent politics affected you and/or your approach to your music whether that be live or in the creation/production process?
Never ever get involved in politics, don't like to do that. I feel like you set yourself up for defeat usually something that I don’t like to do. But that was because when Trump said something about countries he didn’t like, and my job is to travel and I travel as an ambassador of the US to play the sax for other areas and I’ve been to some of the countries he had said that about. I try to stay above the fray, as we are in such a terrible partisan divide that it doesn’t do anybody any good, and we’ve seen general kindness and civility kind of thrown out of the window on everyone’s part and everyone has lost the plot about what it means to be supportive of people and to listen.
I think that every world leader should be required by national law to play a musical instrument and play in global band. You can’t play music without listening. A lot of world leaders don’t listen, just talk, and you have to be able to be open and listen.
WE have to start listening to each other. ALL of us. Coming up with solutions possible for the greater good, like what I was talking about before, not working on things that are just for the individual but for larger group of people. You can’t just dig your heels in!
Over the years, you have won nine Grammy’s, topped Billboard’s Current Contemporary Jazz Albums nine times, collaborated with artists like Celine Dion, hosted two radio shows, been an influential advocate for the LGBTQ community, worked with charities like the Starlight Children’s Foundation, and more, but what has truly been the most rewarding experience as a result of your music career?
What I’m most proud of is modeling a way of being in the world which you don’t see very often especially these days Create something much larger than just you could do on your own.
What advice might you have for musicians in the LGBTQ community, especially those still in the closet, in light of the current political climate here in America?
I’ve never looked at myself as an LGBTQ role model, but when I came out it was a lot different in 2004. I’m very emboldened by seeing young people saying so early in their lives saying this is who I am and there you go. It’s a pretty darn good time for expression, in terms of gender and sexual identity, but we need more artists coming from that perspective always! I associated failure or losing everything with coming out. Then one day I was like “I don’t want to do this anymore. I just want to be me.” And I was willing to risk it all. Funny thing you get on the other side of it this mountain you created and you realized it was a wall you had created. The only change was that I felt better and everything improved. Have the courage to show who you are. We all wear masks in the world. It’s a way of coping, and the minute you can take your mask off and show another side of yourself, there is a reward in that authenticity. I’ve been coloring my hair but one day I was like “I can’t do this anymore, I’m tired of coloring my hair.” I was also getting dangerously close to getting a lot of snickering at not one gray hair on my head and so I just let it go. It’s one thing to come out as gay, but an entirely different thing to come out as gray.
I’m very emboldened by seeing young people saying so early in their lives saying this is who I am and there you go. It’s a pretty darn good time for expression, in terms of gender and sexual identity, but we need more artists coming from that perspective always!
The salt and pepper look is really in these days. Even just the silvery gray. I mean you see young people dying their hair all the time to get that look.
Yeah, it seems so. I’ve been getting a lot of compliments on my new look!
Dave Koz and Friends
The Dave Koz Cruise is always a big hit and obviously a lot of fun. Was there anything about this year’s cruise that made it particularly special?
This year it was Scandinavia and the Baltic and one of the stops was St. Petersburg, Russia. With all the craziness in our country about Russia we weren’t even sure we could get off the ship with all the political turmoil. But it was great and gorgeous and it was a highlight for a lot of us to go to Russia because a lot of the people who come are 95% American and don’t think they would necessarily pick Russia as a place to go on their own. That’s what people love. You're amongst friends even if you don't know anybody because you’re all fans. Music is the force that brings people together.
If you had to narrow it down, which artist has influenced and inspired you most in your career?
Probably on the sax side a guy named David Sanborn. He is one of my all-time favorites on that instrument. I got a chance to tour with him. I worshipped him growing up as a kid. It was very special to not only become friends but also do a big tour side by side. On the vocal side, Stevie Wonder. I love his music, and we got the chance to collaborate. To idolize someone for years and then to be thrust into a situation to work with them is a crazy experience. A ton of people I love and have been a fan of and then gotten a chance to do something with them creatively. I've had so many of those experiences. It’s jaw dropping.
