INTERVIEW: Dave Koz brings his friends to NJ for annual Christmas tour
Photo: Dave Koz will bring his annual Christmas tour to many cities throughout the United States, including New Brunswick, New Jersey. Photo courtesy of Antonio Dixon / Provided by musician’s PR team with permission.
Celebrated saxophonist Dave Koz will bring his annual Christmas tour Tuesday, Dec. 4 to the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Much like many of his concert outings, Koz will not be flying solo. He is planning to celebrate the music of the season with several friends: saxophonist and singer Mindi Abair, guitarist and singer Jonathan Butler, keyboardist Keiko Matsui and vocalist Sheléa.
“Well, it’s a very high-energy, fun, heartfelt show,” Koz said in a recent phone interview. “It’s a very collaborative experience. [It’s] probably 65 to 70 percent holiday music, Christmas music. We do a little Hannukah celebration as well. We’ve got five artists each with their own point of view, each with their own long list of credits, wonderful careers. We all kind of band together … almost like you’re sitting in somebody’s living room, a big living room that’s surrounded by friends and family and the warmth of the holidays.”
Koz’s Christmas tour has been going strong for 21 years, and every year he changes the setlist. That means newcomers are invited, and repeat customers have a welcome spot as well. “Every year it’s a different cast, different songs,” he said. “The Christmas repertoire, holiday repertoire is so rich and vast that you can actually get away with doing a different show every year for 21 years, so we have a lot of fun.”
The saxophonist, who has earned nine Grammy Award nominations, loves the collaborative spirit of his concerts. When he selects fellow musicians to join his family of “friends” on stage, he considers their musicianship and artistry. He wants to trust them on stage and know that they can handle the spotlight, even when he’s taking a break.
“These four other artists are such pros that I have not one worry at all for whatever reason I’m not on stage,” he said. “We know each other pretty well. There’s a lot of trust and a lot of mutual respect there. That really helps, too, because the ego is put to the side. It’s not about how many minutes am I on stage. It’s really what’s best for the show and what’s best for our audience.”
The importance of a Christmas tour, for Koz, is centered on the positivity of the songs. He called the world in 2018 a “crazy place,” and the concert offers audience members a safe haven to feel comfortable and respected. The holidays, for the saxophonist, are a time to reset and remind himself who he really is.
“A lot of pushing and pulling the rest of the year takes us off course, and the holidays remind us of what’s really important in life,” he said. “That’s the subtext of this show. Of course, on the top line, it’s really about entertainment. It’s fun. It’s really high energy. It can be very emotional. The subtext really is about providing ourselves with what’s most important in life: family, friends, being together, tradition, love — those important things that oftentimes are not front and center of what we’re thinking about the rest of the year.”
Luckily, the holiday repertoire is filled with song after song that fans want to hear over and over again. Familiarity is key for a successful Christmas concert, and Koz embraces this fact, rather than runs from it.
“These are songs we’ve heard hundreds maybe thousands of times, and yet we still want to hear them again,” he said. “But the reason why they’re around every year is because they’re good. They’re amazing pieces of music, many of which were written in the golden era of the Great American Songbook by some of the greatest songwriters of all time, whether it’s Irving Berlin or George Gershwin, just classic songs. There’s so much meat on the bone, so when you have something that that’s good, you can really take a lot of chances. … I think that’s what allows artists to take Christmas music and almost morph these songs into their own styles. So you can have country. You can have rock. You can have blues. You can have jazz. You can have R&B Christmas. It works in all genres. I think maybe more so than any other year that we’ve ever had, this show has a lot of different genres represented, and it all works because of the umbrella of Christmas.”
Koz, who has had nine No. 1 albums on Billboard’s Current Contemporary Jazz Albums chart, was born and raised in Los Angeles. He took to music at a young age and eventually graduated from UCLA with a degree in mass communication. Soon after, he decided to become a professional musician. Along the way, he played with Bobby Caldwell and befriended keyboardist Jeff Lorber, two people he counts as mentors. Then, in 1987, he landed a record deal with Capitol Records and released his self-titled debut in 1990.
“I’ll tell you, there were a few people along the way that were major mentors and people that pushed that without whom I wouldn’t be talking to you today,” he said. “They saw something in me that I didn’t know was there, and they nurtured that. And the next thing I was getting a record deal on Capitol Records. A guy named Bobby Caldwell, kind of a legendary R&B jazz singer, and a fusion music pioneer by the name of Jeff Lorber … those two guys were the major mentors in my life, and my older brother, too. His name is Jeff. I guess those three people really helped me get the confidence that I could actually do this, but it wasn’t necessarily my dream. I was just happy to be a sideman for a long time, and I would’ve been happy doing that. But these guys were the ones that said, no, there’s bigger things for you. So it all worked out.”
For this year’s holiday tour, Koz has partnered with the Starlight Children’s Foundation, which helps hospitalized children across the United States. Thanks to the saxophonist and Starlight, this tour will see a “Fun Center” mobile entertainment unit and specially designed gowns donated to a local hospital in each city Koz visits. For the New Brunswick gig, Koz is giving the donation to Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.
“Our tour this holiday is partnered with the Starlight Children’s Foundation, which has been a charity I’ve worked with for a long time,” he said. “It helps kids who are in the hospital for a long period of time. These are burn victims, cancer victims, just kids that want to be kids, and over the last two years, our ‘Fan Network’ through various activities has raised over $300,000 for Starlight, which enables us in each city to make a big donation to a local hospital.”
Donating to children who need some extra help this holiday season seems to perfectly align with Koz’s personal ethics and his desire to spread holiday cheer. His concert tour is one big, ribbon-wrapped present — to audience members and the community at large.
“I think it’s never been more important for arts to be out there, to be put out there, for musicians and artists of all kinds to be out there to put their work in the environment because we need it so much,” he said. “There’s so much negativity and so much back fighting and so much conflict, and music, I’ve seen it firsthand, it brings people together.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Dave Koz and Friends will perform live Tuesday, Dec. 4 at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Click here for more information and tickets.
