For more than two decades, saxophonist Kenny G has warmed the hearts of countless fans with his velvety smooth delivery of romantic jazz tunes.
The king of smooth jazz visits Taipei tomorrow and Taichung on Sunday for concerts that will see him play a few classics and preview
a new tune from his upcoming album Heart & Soul,
which will be released worldwide at the end of next month. He will also appear tonight in the season finale of the TV talent show One Million Star (超級星光大道), when he will share the stage with Taiwanese singing sensation Lin Yu-chun (林育群).
A prodigy who started his career by playing as a sideman in Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra when he was only 17, Kenny G (last name Gorelick), has moved on to a career as the most successful instrumentalist of his time by selling more than 75 million albums worldwide.
He has collaborated with the likes of Andrea Bocelli, Whitney Houston, Natalie Cole, Celine Dion and Aretha Franklin, and his 1994 album Miracles is the best-selling Christmas album ever.
“I consider good music to come from an artist who has spent a long time perfecting his art and accomplishing his style,” the 54-year-old star in a phone interview last week.
Of his compositions, Kenny G considers his breakthrough hit Songbird and Coming Home as two of his favorites.
Asked why he thinks he has managed to build such a successful career, he said, “I’m glad audiences around the world responded to these melodies. I’m just glad my music communicates with people.”
Kenny G will perform two Chinese tunes for his Taiwan concerts, the folk song Jasmine Flower (茉莉花) and Teresa Teng’s (鄧麗君) classic The Moon Represents My Heart (月亮代表我的心).
“I’m glad to have the chance to play these two songs because I don’t normally have the chance to perform them in the US,” he said.
Asked who he would like to perform a duet with, Kenny G replied, “Jackie Chan (成龍). I have performed on stage with him before. It would be great to record a duet with him.” The two met in the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and became friends.
To establish a closer connection with his fans during concerts, Kenny G makes it a routine to roam through audiences while performing.
Kenny G is often criticized by purists for crafting easy-listening background music, but he jazzes up his tunes during concerts by improvising — which he considers to be “visually entertaining.”
“There won’t be any stage effects in this concert. It will just be my music,” he said.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby