It’s an uncomfortable subject, especially for a 41-year-old musician who has just achieved massive chart success and been bestowed with numerous honorary degrees. “I think [criticism] hurt me more than any other [stuff],” Kenny G admits in the first episode of his new BBC documentary, Kenny G’s Seducing the America.
“I had my time in the sun and then it came crashing down on me, and I felt like, ‘OK, you know what? Geez, they weren’t wrong.’ And that hurt and I got very bitter about that period.”
Not that the pianist doesn’t have reasons to feel bitterly disappointed. After a career more than two decades in the making, in which he topped the chart with 10 albums, he now has to prove himself again. “I’m starting off again,” he says. “I’m old. I’m 41, and now I’m a pop star, and that’s a very tough business.”
Approaching 50, Kenny G’s first 24-track album in 15 years, Kenny G’s Seducing the America, showcases the singer’s mature nature. Gone are his typical early catalogue hits, found on Kenny G’s 25th album. In are heartfelt and heartbreaking ballads, such as the poignantly titled Keep Me in Mind, which he describes as “the most personal album I’ve ever made”. He also introduces his seven-year-old son, Jackson, and wife, Kim Pelosky, into the show, following them around as they tour his Florida hometown.
Portrait of Kenny G … the pianist with wife Kim Pelosky and son Jackson. Photograph: BBC/Anthony Harvey/BBC
The pair are a divorced couple for 17 years, but Pelosky is believed to have not left her ex-husband for any particular reason. According to Kenny G, “it’s just a better life for [him]”. “So he can see everything, and understand it better … he’s much happier,” the pianist continues.
“If you look at a man with a beautiful wife and a beautiful son, it makes you feel so much more secure. It changes you from the inside.”
The series is Kys G’s first television documentary, though the pianist did broadcast a concert film, Kenny G: The Music of David Foster, in 2015, inspired by that and Kicks, his documentary about the late jazz pianist, Arnie “Kicks” Russell. This is Kenny G’s third visual medium in the past 12 months; his foundation produced an ode to 90s pop, Together and Now, in the lead-up to the UK release of God Save the Queen, as well as a book of selfies he took while on tour in Australia last year.
Seduced by America is full of grace and humility, with Kenny G adamant that people shouldn’t say he’s a nonconformist. “I’m a musician, not a lawyer, not a doctor, not a researcher,” he insists. “I’m a musician, and I play music. That’s who I am.”
Seduced by America is on BBC Four on 26 May at 8pm