Dave Koz finds himself cast in the role of opening act for Barry Manilow, and frankly he couldn’t be happier.
“I haven’t been an opening act for a long time so that tool was in my tool shed, it just hasn’t been sharpened for awhile,” the superstar smooth jazz saxophonist said during a phone call somewhere in the California desert as he drove back to Los Angeles. “This is an opportunity to take that out and really sharpen it.”
So what is it like for the 53-year-old musician who has had a handful of hits, including “You Make Me Smile,” has recorded 19 albums since his 1990 eponymous debut and once served as the bandleader on the Food Network’s popular “The Emeril Lagasse Show,” to find himself performing before audiences of tens of thousands each night, most of whom likely have no idea who he is?
Magical.
“The people are not there to see me”: “I think it’s a combination of having only 30 minutes to make my case and knowing that the people are not there to see me. They are there to see Barry, their favorite artist. So what is my job? It’s not a Dave Koz show so how can I put the essentials of what I do into 30 minutes, introduce these people who have never seen me before or never heard my name before? … My actual job is to put these people into a great mood so that when Barry walks out on stage they are ready for him. That’s a great challenge for me and I really enjoy the process.”
“That’s the Manilow magic”: “From the music you hear when you walk into the venue to the music you hear when you leave, everything in that entire experience has been touched by the hand of Barry. He’s a part of everything. In his mind, he’s created this evening of entertainment, from the opening act to the main show and to the end. He invites me out to play a song and at the end, I come and take a bow with him. It’s a whole evening that makes sense from the beginning … to the end.”
Birth of a friendship: “I met Barry going back 15 years ago. I got called by him to play on a recording session for the album ‘Here At the Mayflower.’ ... The concept of the album was about an apartment building and each song was about a particular apartment and the story going on inside. This song was about this lonely woman who lived next door who listened to this saxophone player over and over and over. At the end of the song he actually sung my name in the lyric and that was the first day I met him. I had to pick my jaw off the floor, but I knew then that this was going to be a special friendship in my life.”
Making memories one-on-one: “He’s been kind enough to ask me to travel with him, so we have lots of hang time and we have time to talk about music and life in general. It’s been the special part for me, getting to know him better and understand how that mind works and how this magical thing that he creates works. … I’ve really learned so many valuable lessons from this man. … You cannot put a price on that. I consider this one of the best experiences of my life, getting to hang with him.”
Jam-packed opening act: “It’s kind of a nice introduction for people who have never seen us or heard my music before. I play three of my songs (including ‘You Make Me Smile,’ ‘Together Again’) and three cover songs I’ve recorded before including … the theme song to the movie ‘Frozen,’ ‘Let It Go.’ That’s on the ‘Collaborations: 25th Anniversary Collection’ album that I released in 2015. That’s really the one song in the Manilow show that people go, ‘Oh, OK , I get it.’ It comes right in the middle of the show; everybody knows that song. It always gets a great reaction.”
