By Lea Michelle Cash

Last Thursday, I had intentions of staying around to watch just a bit of Kenny G's performance concert.  Arriving early, I watched a rainbow colored group of people parade to their seats. People came in large numbers and the crowd of individuals included multiple elderly citizens, people using walkers and sitting in wheel chairs.  They all stepped out for an extraordinary opportunity, to align their destiny that evening, to become a moment of history-Kenny G's first performance in the Inland Empire at San Manuel Indian Bingo & Casino.

Kenny G

Standing on a small block stage, he played his saxophone while the audience quieted to an extraordinary hush, and all you could hear was Kenny and his music.  He stayed there playing a few songs before he headed to the front stage and during that process as if they were mesmerized the audience remained quiet and peaceful. 

Then Kenny spoke.  The audience responds. The band plays on in a variety of forms, R&B, smooth jazz, Spanish rhythms, and classic forms, the most beautiful music my ears has heard in a very long time. Kenny G's performance-priceless.

Kenny G started playing the saxophone at the age of ten. His first saxophone was a rented model that his mother got for him.  At seventeen years old his high school band director assisted him to get his first professional job with Barry White's, Love Unlimited Orchestra.  While attending college as an accounting major, Kenny was a student by day and a saxophonist late nights, until he went solo, recording his first debut album in 1982.  The rest, let's say is history.  Kenny G has become the best selling instrumental performer of all time.  

Many members of his band have been with him for 25 years, including his African American best friend from high school, Robert Damper on piano. Every band member was provided the opportunity to shine as bright as stars, resulting in poetry in motion-pure artistry.

In 2005, Canadian reporter Francoise Morissette attended a Kenny G performance.  She wrote, "When Kenny G plays, the audience enters into a state of rapture and the bliss is palpable. Adults connect with the magic: all of a sudden, dreams become possible and the universe, a place of words.  For a while reality disappears you float in suspension, restored, renewed, and reconciled with the best of yourself and the work."  Morrissett called Kenny's performance a glimpse of heaven.  Two years later, not much as changed, because that is exactly what I experienced as I stayed for the entire performance.

As the concert began to wind down, and the stage light went dark as the band played on, we heard the sweet romantic sound of Kenny's saxophone, to the left of the stage, way in the back among the crowd.  Again the audience explodes, while Kenny standing on a small block stage kept playing and quiets us again, to a peaceful state. 

In honor of his first visit to the Inland Empire after the performance, Kenny G and his entire band, stepped out to meet the audience and sign autographs.  I purchased a tee-shirt which everyone signed. Recently, I wore it and I was standing in line at a store.  A woman and her elderly mother in a wheel chair were standing in front me. She said to her mother, Ma, look at the Kenny G tee-shirt."  They both looked and then she asked, "Where did you get that Tee-shirt? He signed it?  My mother loves Kenny G."

I smiled and told them the story and let the elderly woman know about the many individuals that looked like her at the concert, and oh what an experience they all received. Her eyes seemed to glisten from the thought of it. 

Celebrating 25 years as an entertainer, Kenny G has proven himself a master musical craftsman. He is truly in a league of his own and what a good concert he gave.