Saxophonist Sanborn Takes Stage at Crocus City

The capital’s music lovers are to be treated to some midweek quality jazz as popular U.S. saxophonist David Sanborn teams up with Moscow-based band TransAtlantic to perform at Crocus City Hall.

Sanborn’s visit comes just a few months after the release of his album “Only Everything,” which is the second of a two-part tribute to the late Ray Charles and is album No. 24 in Sanborn’s career.

A highly regarded session player, he performed alongside the likes of David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Elton John and Stevie Wonder, who later invited Sanborn to play on his landmark 1972 album “Talking Book.” Working with Miles Davis, a must for every top jazz musician, is also on the list of Sanborn’s personal career highlights.

Asked where he gets his energy from, Sanborn, 64, said in an e-mailed interview that it’s from the people he has worked with: “I always try to find people that are creative, that give me energy and new inspiration.”

Looking at the list of top musicians he’s already played with throughout his 35-year-long career, it’s fair to say this source will last Sanborn for another couple of decades.

With such a past, it’s no surprise that the musician gets irritated when critics label his music as smooth jazz and that he prefers not to be associated with the genre.

Sanborn originally took up saxophone as a young man as physical therapy to overcome the effects of polio, from which he suffered as a kid. At the age of 20, he joined the Butterfield Blues Band and their five-year collaboration saw the band perform at the legendary Woodstock festival. When the band split up, Sanborn embarked on a highly prolific solo career moving occasionally from jazz to pop and rock.

What remained throughout those years is the distinctive Sanborn sound: lush, passionate and sometimes anguished. That, he says, is the “product” of all his early influences, including jazz icon Julian “Cannonball” Adderley? and Ray Charles’ collaborator, saxophonist Hank Crawford. It’s probably this unique sound combined with the modern influences that attracts so many people to see Sanborn, although he admits that he himself has no clue why his music has had such huge commercial success. “I honestly don’t know the reason why people have responded to my music. The only thing I can figure out is that I do what I do with as much honesty and sincerity as possible.”

In Moscow, Sanborn will be joined by the popular Russian jazz band TransAtlantic, whose leader Sergei Chipenko has already brought a number of top jazz musicians to town in recent years. For Sanborn, who visited Moscow for a concert in 2003, this will be his first experience playing with Russian musicians, and he admits that he is very excited even though there won’t be much time for rehearsals: “It’s always a surprise what the music will sound like, and I like it that way.”