Back in fall 2019, as Dave Koz was readying himself to do his annual holiday tour, he was already thinking about making an ambitious new album.
“In the beginning, the idea was to make like a double album or maybe a double EP that would reflect a little bit about where I’d been and then where I’d like to go,” Koz recalled in a phone interview. “I remember even, ‘Yesterday and Today’ was the working title of that.”
Of course, within a few months, the pandemic hit and this turned everything upside down, including Koz’s plans for a double album. Like many people, the saxophonist struggled to find his bearings in this strange new world of closed businesses and quarantining.
But Koz, who has always been one of the busier artists in music, hosting two weekly radio shows, organizing cruises, partnering in a wine business, recording albums and doing at least a pair of tours most every year, didn’t let the unexpected free time keep him from being productive.
As a result, when Koz got back to touring post-pandemic, he had not one, but two, new albums under his belt.
The first of those albums, A New Day, arrived in October 2020, and it marked Koz’s first album of original non-holiday music in a decade. To an extent, it follows through on the idea of making an album that stays true to the musical style of the 10 non-holiday studio albums Koz has released since 1990 (all of which have gone at least top 5 on the contemporary jazz chart). Like his previous albums, A New Day is largely in the instrumental R&B-accented smooth jazz realm.
The pandemic, though, did influence the upbeat feel of the music of A New Day.
“Immediately kind of when the pandemic hit, this is March of 2020, after the initial shock wore off, I was like, well, this is what I noticed about myself. I was really fumbling toward, trying to make myself feel better,” Koz said. “And I noticed it was really through music that I was able to accomplish that, my feel-good music from people I could count on. So it kind of dawned on me that maybe I should get my ass into gear and record some music, hopefully, to do the same thing for other people.”
The Golden Hour project actually preceded work on A New Day, and Koz feels it spurred a more spontaneous approach to making the latter album.
In February 2020, Koz got together with producer/co-writer Cory Wong to compose songs for that album. The Golden Hour was a quite different venture for Koz, pairing him and guitarist Wong with a big band playing, in many cases, songs that were more energetic—at times even rocking—than Koz’s other albums.
“He inspired me,” Koz said of Wong. “He said to me, ‘I just want you to do one thing, and that’s one thing for me, and that is not second guess yourself. Let’s just go with it. Don’t try to overthink about stuff. Let’s just capture these songs in the moment, and then we can come back to them and see whether we like them.’ At least in the writing phase, ‘Don’t judge.’ That was really great advice because I’m a total judger while it’s going down. So I think a little bit of that rubbed off in the songwriting for A New Day, where I was just able to just say, ‘OK, I like this today, and let’s finish it and see if it makes it tomorrow.’”
Koz, though, wasn’t through making new music. He has a new EP, Dave Koz Does Disney, featuring his versions of several Disney songs, coming out. And last year, he released Christmas Ballads, his eighth holiday album, which was released just in time for last year’s 25th-anniversary outing of his Dave Koz and Friends Christmas tour, back again this year for a 26th edition.
Working with producer Philippe Saisse, who has contributed to several of Koz’s albums, including as an arranger on his 2020 album, A New Day, a first step was figuring out a theme for the album—something that took some effort after seven previous holiday albums.
“Philippe and I, we talked through our many conversations before there was even a note recorded. We came up with the idea of it’s like the time of the day when you would listen to an album like this,” Koz said.
“So the specific moment that we had in mind when we recorded it was that feeling of after your guests have left. The party is over. You’ve put away the dishes. It’s the week before Christmas. You’ve got the fireplace going. You have a nice beverage in your hand, maybe somebody special there to share it with. What does that feel like musically? That’s why we decided to do all ballads and to reflect that warm moment that’s very specific in the holidays. And I think we got it,” he continued.
Another hurdle was choosing songs Koz had not previously recorded that fit the mood of the Christmas Ballads album.
“We recorded 10 songs that I had never recorded before,” Koz said, including the original song, “Wrapped Around Your Smile,” in the equation. “It was not easy to find 10 new songs. This was album number eight of Christmas music, but we were able to do it.”
Actually, Koz found several holiday classics to record, including “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” “Away in a Manger/Silent Night” and “Merry Christmas Darling,” all of which are performed in Koz’s silky smooth jazz form, but with some creative arrangements that often include orchestration and tasteful spotlight moments for solos from Koz, and guests David Benoit (keyboards), Rick Braun (trumpet) and Peter White (guitar).
There are also some less obvious song choices, including John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” coupled with “Imagine” (with Jade providing vocals on the latter song), and “Petit Papa Noël,” a song plucked from the 1946 French film, Destins.
A few songs from Christmas Ballads figure to be included in this year’s Dave Koz and Friends Christmas tour. But he will be sure to also perform the Christmas songs that have become fan favorites on these annual tours. This year, Koz is joined by guitarist/singer Jonathan Butler (who has done several of these holiday tours), singer Rebecca Jade, sax player Marcus Anderson and pianist Justin-Lee Schultz
Koz said he is grateful for how his Christmas tours have become an annual tradition.
Dave Koz and Friends perform at 7:30pm, Wednesday, Dec. 20 at Ruth Finley Person Theater (at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts), 50 Mark West Springs Rd., Santa Rosa. Tickets are $49 to $179 and available at tickets.lutherburbankcenter.org/0/5010.
