Fans of good-time summer music will rejoice when out eight-time Grammy-nominated saxophonist Dave Koz brings his recent and acclaimed “Summer Horns” CD to life Aug. 22 at Dell Music Center.
Under the name “Dave Koz and Friends,” the compilation, which hit number-one on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Album Chart, found Koz bringing together fellow saxophone stars Mindi Abair, Gerald Albright and Richard Elliot to record an album’s worth of covers.
Koz said collaborating with other musicians is very much a part of who he is, as a person and a musician.
“I love working with other artists and have done this for a number of years,” he said. “That part of my life where it’s just putting artists together and seeing what happens, this is something that I love to do. From the beginning, that has always been an aspect of my creative life because I think when you put people together, magic can happen.”
Yes, magic can happen … or the opposite.
Koz admitted he initially had some worries that so many stars of the genre on one project could become a clash of egos, but those concerns soon melted away.
“That’s where the right casting comes in,” he said. “I went to these three other artists, who are some of my favorite saxophonists in the world and also at the top of their games. They do albums and tours on their own as soloists. As long as I’ve known them, we’ve never actually worked together. I made myself very vulnerable and had them agree to do this album and a tour before I knew this whole thing would work. The first day in the studio, here we were, shoulder to shoulder, and there was this anticipation of what sound was going to be created and what the four of us would play together. And there was this huge sigh of relief. I can’t even tell you how relieved we all were when what we heard on that first recording session we all liked. From the very beginning, it seemed to work. But you have to cast the right people with the right attitudes, and it’s very different from being a soloist to being part of a band or a horn section, because you have to put your ego aside and be one of the members as opposed to the star. I think with this grouping of people, the four of us came to the project with the right attitude, and as a result we’ve got a great blend.”
Another potential source of anxiety Koz had to contend with was the material being covered — classic songs from groups with legendary horn sections like Chicago, Tower of Power and James Brown, to name a few.
Koz said it is tricky to cover such revered songs.
“It’s a classic because it’s perfect,” he said. “You can’t improve upon it, so the minute you try and say, ‘Watch me, I’m going to improve upon this song everybody knows,’ you’re going to be led down a path that you can’t win. The only thing we can do is tip our hat to these songs. It’s walking a fine line because you want to be respectful of the original but you also want to come to this song with some new information, some re-imagination of the original piece of music. And that, for us, was all about the arrangements of these songs. We went to the horn arrangers that are the guys that did the arrangements for these bands. I think that was a big part of the success of the project, to pick the right horn arrangers for us to pick the right notes that we can sink our teeth into.”
Music fans can’t argue with the results: an infectiously fun, playful and powerful collection of songs featuring a monster sax ensemble.
“It’s a super-sized sax section,” Koz said. “It is a wall of sound because it’s not just one saxophone and it’s not a synthesizer. It’s the real deal. When we come out I look so I can see people’s faces in the audiences because it hits you over the head, this sound. That has been a really cool experience. We also have this killer band that’s made up of members of each of our bands. We each got a chance to handpick one player to put a super-group together to back us up. So you got four sax players and four rhythm-section players on stage that are putting out a lot of sound on stage, and people are feeling it.”
Koz added that the shows on the Summer Horns tour will feature songs by the individual members of the ensemble.
“We each have our own fans, so we want to make sure we give the fans at least a little bit of our own music, so there’s that element,” he said. “Plus there are some surprises.”
With the success of the “Summer Horns” album and tour, Koz said there is a possibility of a second album and another tour next year. But fans should take the opportunity to catch the show now, as nothing is certain.
“You should have seen the list of the songs we didn’t get to,” Koz said about recording the album. “Everybody had their favorites but there were a lot of songs that were left off the table. There’s all these songs we could do a volume two with, and we don’t know whether that is going to happen quite yet, but it seems like it would be a good idea. When I went to my cohorts, the commitment was to do one album and a summer tour. We don’t know whether this is ever going to happen again, so this is very special. We have about 30 shows and for our fans, that is it. When this tour is over, as far as we know, that’s it for ‘Summer Horns.’ But the response has been so great and the attendance has been so great, I think that means we may do another tour at least, and maybe another album. We’ll see.”
Even if we don’t see a “Summer Horns 2,” a talent like Koz has enough on his plate to keep him busy.
“I worked earlier this year with Gloria Estefan on her standards project, which is going to be all over PBS next month, and I’m going to be working with her in the fall,” Koz said. “That turned me on to a Latin-music concept, which has got me going. There’s a bunch of stuff in my mind. I don’t know which is going to be the next project, but it’s nice to have the creative outlet to explore it all.”
Dave Koz and Friends perform 8 p.m. at Dell Music Center, 2500 Strawberry Mansion Drive. For more information or tickets, call 215-685-9560.