He’s identified with a single kind of music, smooth jazz what’s more, that term was coined expressly to describe his music. “Listening to Kenny G” subtly and surely teases out the mighty and overarching idea of the inseparability of the artist and the art, the notion of art as the embodiment of the artist’s personality-for better or for worse.Īs Lane notes in the film, the saxophonist and composer known as Kenny G is the best-selling instrumental artist ever. Lane’s deft and gentle portraiture is dedicated to the profound proposition that such aversion can be explained, even justified, by the very portrait of the artist that emerges. Her film’s ironies start with the title, because many of the movie’s viewers, like many of its interview subjects from the world of music, would rather not listen to Kenny G’s music at all-and their aversion is the mainspring of the film. In the guise of the banal fan-service genre of the pop-musician portrait, Lane delivers something grand and sly: a cinematic work of music criticism, a far-reaching speculation on the philosophy of taste and the sociology of aesthetics. ![]() Unlike revenge, irony is best served warm, and the authentic warmth of the director Penny Lane’s documentary “Listening to Kenny G” (streaming on HBO Max) makes its ironies all the more revelatory.
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