Kenny G.

Kenny G has a way with melody. That’s not necessarily a revelation, but more like a huge understatement, and it really comes into focus at this point in Kenny’s amazing career. This is a musician who has sold more than 75 million albums worldwide, owns the best-selling instrumental record of all time with 1992’s 12-times-platinum Breathless, has the number one Christmas record of all time with 1994’s 8-times platinum Miracles, and whose song “Going Home” has, improbably, become the official end-of-work-day anthem in China. At the heart of those achievements is Kenny’s ability to convey deep emotional resonance with his saxophone, a skill never more apparent than on Innocence, his 20th studio album and fifth for Concord Records.

The 12-track project’s theme is lullabies, which have existed for thousands of years not only as a means of soothing babies to sleep but also to impart cultural and familial traditions. “Lullabies are very special to me,” says Kenny, who has been mulling an album with this musical focus for several years and even mentioned the idea in passing in Penny Lane’s acclaimed 2021 HBO documentary on him, Listening to Kenny G. “They hold a special place in my heart. It’s the melodies. They are beautiful and timeless and whenever I hear them, wonderful memories start rushing back to me.”

Listeners will likely experience the same sensation while enjoying Kenny’s versions of “Rock-a-Bye Baby,” Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow,” Richard Rodgers’ “Edelweiss,” and Frederic Chopin’s “Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2” and “Berceuse,” which he purposefully rendered without any interpretive twists and turns. “The problem that often happens when artists record songs with traditional melodies is that they put too many twists on things and they end up making them worse,” he says. “With lullabies, you don’t necessarily need to put much of a twist on them. You just do your thing and at the same time stay true to the melody. My thing is being able to look at a melody and understand how to play it. I’m very lucky that I have that sensibility when it comes to melody. I think that’s also why my Christmas records do so well, and why people tell me they listen to them all year long.”