Garrett Kenny
Garrett Kenny
Garrett, Kenny, jazz saxophonist and flutist; b. Detroit, Oct. 9, 1960. His father was an amateur tenor saxophonist. He intended to study film composing at Berklee but instead joined the big bands of Mercer Ellington and Thad Jones-Mel Lewis. After attending Rutgers Univ., he was a member of OTB, a band put together under the auspices of Blue Note Records. In the early 1980s, he played with Joanne Brackeen, Art Blakey, Woody Shaw, and Freddie Hubbard. In 1986 he began touring with Miles Davis, continuing until Davis’s death in 1991. Other than performances with Sting in South Africa, he has since worked primarily as a leader. A stint in Indonesia (1996) inspired his composition “Delta-Bali Blues/7 He was voted Alto Saxist of the Year in Down Beat’s 1996 Readers Poll. In 1999 alone he played in several U.S. cities as well as Germany, Scot-land, Tunisia, France, and Turkey. He played on soundtracks for Love Jones and Great White Hype, and acted and played in HBO’s Subway Stories.
Discography
Introducing (1984); Garrett 5 (1988); Prisoner of Love (1989); African Exchange Student (1990); Black Hope (1992); Triology (1995); Threshold (1995); Pursuance: The Music of John Coltrane (1996) Simply Said (1999).
—Lewis Porter