A Man and His Sax

Saxophonist Dave Koz is still letting the music move him and taking change in stride.

 By Bruce Emond

Growing up, Dave Koz considered a “thousand different things” as possible professions, but his fate was sealed when he discovered the saxophone at the age of 13.

He picked it up only because saxophonist was the only position vacant in his older brother Jeff’s band, and he was itching to be part of the group.

“It almost felt like I was discovering another part of my body,” says the native Californian by e-mail. “I had taken piano lessons and drum lessons before and completely sucked at those instruments. But the sax was different, and my love for it was so immediate.”

A couple of years later, Jeff finally relented and allowed Dave to join the band, which played at weddings and parties in the San Fernando Valley. For Koz, his time in the band was his musical apprenticeship.

Since then, the saxophone has taken Koz, who turns 48 on March 27, many places in his career and life. He has toured with Bobby Caldwell and Richard Marx, released 15 contemporary jazz albums, most recently Hello Tomorrow (Concord Records, 2010) and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2009.

The proudest moment of his career was introducing his parents to then US president Bill Clinton at a fund-raiser where he performed.

Through his career, Koz has been able to fulfill his love of travel and, he says, “meet very special people, sharing the amazing power of music to heal and inspire, to nurture and entertain”.

One of the places near and dear to his heart is Indonesia. He came here in the 1990s on a promotional tour organized by businessman and jazz impresario Peter Gontha, whom he praises for “changing my life … He is the reason I fell in love with Indonesia, and I will be eternally grateful to him for giving me that tremendous gift.”

Koz hopes to return here soon. “My love affair with the country only seems to get stronger. The incredibly rich culture, the warmth of the Indonesian people, the music, the makanan enak sekali [really delicious food]. So many reasons to keep coming back.”

Friends for Life

Koz graduated with a mass communications degree from UCLA before pursuing his music career.

“It took many years before I felt confident that I could make a living playing the sax,” he says. “But now I can look back and feel so blessed that I was lucky enough to find something that I loved to do and could also make it my life’s work.”

He jokes that it can be a lonely world for one man and his instrument in a vocal world. Music helped him through life’s difficult patches, including as a teenager.

“Truthfully, the sax chose me,” he says. “It became my best friend, my confidante, my most trusted ally. I was going through such emotional turmoil at that point in my life – and the sax became my vehicle to deal with a lot of the things that I couldn’t find the words for. In many ways, it saved my life.”

Ironically, he says the toughest times in his life were also the most inspiring moments for his music. After his father died in 1997, a depressed Koz did not pick up his instrument for several months.

“Then one day, I just got inspired – I went in the studio to make a holiday album at the time, and totally just made the music for my dad,” he says of December Makes Me Feel This Way. “It’s probably one of, if not the most, emotionally resonant album I’ve made.

“The same thing happened when I lost my mom. I spent almost a year on a self-imposed sabbatical and then finally, when it was time, came back to the music with a renewed sense of purpose and intention. So, those very difficult periods in my life provided the most forward momentum of my career, creatively.”

The music business has changed dramatically since Koz started out professionally in the 1980s. He describes it as “total democracy” today, with people able to produce music in their living rooms for next to nothing, post it on the Internet and find an audience without using a record company.

“On the down side, it seems like people have devalued music a great deal these past couple years. I know it still occupies a big place in people’s lives, but once something is ‘free’ it’s difficult for people to pay for it in the future,” he says.

“We haven’t figured out the new model for how our business is going to work in the future … But in this confusion, great innovation can take place. It’s terrifying and unbelievably exciting at the same time.”

For someone who paid his dues as a musician, Koz is dismayed by young people’s focus on taking shortcuts to celebrity through reality talent shows.

“Now, most kids just want the fame. And the result of it all is very short career windows. Get a hit, work the crap out of it, then that’s it. What about artist development and having a career that spans a lifetime?”

He denies this is the sour-grapes view of an older musician considering the ambitious upstarts, because he believes there will always be fans for his kind of music.

“More and more, the music business is actually two distinct businesses, one geared toward hit pop music, which is like 90 percent, and the more niche aspect of a ton of artists who are fighting for that other 10 percent. But it’s in that smaller group that I think you’re finding the coolest stuff being created.”

Change for the Better

Hello Tomorrow, produced by Marcus Miller and Grammy winner John Burk, is all about confronting and embracing change, Koz says. He adds that it represents who and where he is in his life today.

“It’s a scary time for so many people, this unprecedented frequency and velocity of change … Thankfully, some are slowly embracing this ‘new normal’ and finding some sense of comfort in the discomfort of it all,” he says.

“That is the case for me personally. Through making this album, I too was able to embrace many of my own fears and the result is an album that sounds fresh, alive and free, with all live musicians, creating music in the moment.”

The American is known as one of the “nice guys” of music, a low-key presence who always has kind words to say about his fellow musicians and time for fans. But for many years the sunny disposition concealed his angst over his sexuality.

Although his family and friends knew he is gay, he says it took much longer to find the right time to come out publicly. It came for him at the age of 40, when he no longer wished to live the double life of playing it straight in public and being gay behind closed doors.

“One day I just made the decision and I haven’t looked back since. I can honestly say it was the best decision I ever made in my life,” says Koz, who wrote an essay “The Beauty of Coming Out” for US gay magazine The Advocate.

“With that simple statement, I finally became a whole person, and was able to really start living. All the horrible things I imagined that would happen didn’t; in fact the only change that occurred was in me. I will never forget the incredible outpouring of support I received from colleagues, other musicians, fans and friends. It was absolutely amazing.”

Koz says he does not like to make long-term plans, but simply lets life unfold in its own way.

“My whole thing is about learning and growing, as a person, as a musician, as a member of our global community. And I know I have a lot more growing to do!

As for what he wants his musical legacy to be, he offers a simple and characteristically modest statement: “He came, he played the sax pretty good, he made people happy.”

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