Upholding the Standards of Smooth Jazz Purists

Have you seen the Wikipedia entry on smooth jazz lately? Probably not, but it’s a mess. The administrators have tagged almost every section with provisos: “Its neutrality is disputed”; “needs additional citations for verification”; “reads like an advertisement”; may contain “unverified claims.”

Poor smooth jazz, besieged by haters. Being righteous about what’s called traditional jazz is easy. Being righteous about smooth jazz is much more difficult. It is a commercial construct, a radio format more than a style of music. For 20 years it has appealed across race and class and gender, partly because it asks so little. It is a physical presence but an intellectual absence. It is an unverified claim.

It lost ground last week when WQCD-FM, the New York radio station known as CD101.9 and the station with smooth jazz’s biggest market share in the country, went off the air, replaced at 101.9 by the rock format WRXP. In related news, the saxophonist Kenny G — the regent of the smoothiverse, a man who at his height moved 15 million copies of just one album (“Breathless,” from 1992) — has been selling fewer records lately. Well, so has everyone. But as a consequence he now plays where actual jazz performers play, like the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, where he appeared on Tuesday.

The concert was an outside rental and not a production of Jazz at Lincoln Center itself, but there was still a paradox in there somewhere. The organization has effortfully formed definitions of what jazz is and is not, and Kenny Gorelick, one assumes, is a boldface Not.

Curly-locked and slim-hipped, he made his customary entrance, playing and walking through the audience. As he approached a small stage in the front rows, he halted a slow ballad to hold a single note, by circular breathing, for several minutes, shaking hands with the audience along the way. In 1997 he set a Guinness world record for longest saxophone note — 45 minutes 47 seconds — so this bit is now a running joke. “Still going ...” flashed the screen above the stage. “Still going ...” He held the note with the same feathery authority that he plays everything, and the tremendously long note had no emotional or narrative connection to the song itself.

Kenny G is a dull but wickedly consistent musician: automatic with his tremulous phrasing and canned licks, which formed fast, organized roils during his unaccompanied solos; melismatic purrings of the melody on ballads; and gospel phrases in R&B songs. He was strangely unobtrusive, letting his band provide most of the excitement. His stage persona is the gifted California optimist, a good-time bro unencumbered by history.

His new album, “Rhythm & Romance” — released by Concord Records and Starbucks — is his first Latin record, with traces of bossa nova, samba, salsa and Peruvian lando. You can’t really fault him for exoticism. That’s for adults. His show seemed more aimed at children.

When he began the first notes of “Havana,” from an older record, the screen read: “Havana: ha-VAN-a, n.: A city of rhythm and romance,” then showed pictures of palm trees and tropical fish. He made much of his new album, which in contrast to his past records features much of his own writing. But he didn’t evince his own connection to Latin music. Introducing his new single, the mild boogaloo “Sax-O-Loco,” he gave seven words of exegesis: “This is a very fun, happy song.”

His band played the new music with assurance; the percussionist Ron Powell and the bassist Vail Johnson gave it teeth by playing athletically on feature solos. The band did the right thing by hiring two excellent local percussionists, Pedro Martinez and Johnny Rivero, to give the rhythm more depth, form and, I guess, authenticity, but it didn’t make it mean much.

By BEN RATLIFF

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