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You can’t criticize people for having different and new ideas.” Not surprisingly, his favorite saxophonists are the equally accessible David Sanborn and Grover Washington, Jr., artists who have also suffered the wrath of jazz purists: “I like them because they’re always innovative.

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“Critics of commercial jazz probably don’t know how to create commercial jazz,” he speculated. When asked to explain why “commercialism” is such a a dirty word in the jazz world, Kenny G only paused for a second. I’m into new ideas and experimentation, so it doesn’t bother me if the purists don’t like my music.” “I’m not trying to relive jazz’s past,” he said. But Like Lorber, he has received criticism from jazz purists who regard his highly accessible sound as a commercial sell-out, but he is philosophical about that. It was with Lorber’s band in the early ‘80s that Kenny G first got the chance to focus full-time on R&B (“that’s where my heart lies”), but it wasn’t long before he left to establish himself as a solo artist: “I just outgrew that association,” he said. At least now I won’t have to worry about (the record company) pushing anymore vocals on me.”

The success of ‘Songbird’ proves I was right. “I had always had to push for more instrumentals. He acknowledged that it had felt odd, as a non-singing musician, to have to feature singers to have a fair shot at a hit. “A saxophonist can be just as expressive as a good singer,” Kenny G said. David Sanborn’s rollicking “Chicago Song” has become a staple on pop and black playlists, Najee’s remake of Anita Baker’s soulful “Sweet Love” made a respectable showing on the R&B and jazz charts and Madhouse, a group composed of Prince’s cohorts, got heavy black radio airplay in the beginning of the year with “Six,” a saxophone-spiced jam. While it isn’t often that a jazz-oriented instrumental earns enough radio airplay to become a hit, there have been other exceptions to the rule this year-and they’ve all been by saxophonists. Not only will he perform Sunday as part of the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl, but he also is scheduled to headline two nights at the Universal Amphitheatre in November. The saxophonist was once part of R&B /jazz keyboardist Jeff Lorber’s Fusion and also played with Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra and has done stage work in the bands of Diahann Carroll, Liberace and the Mills Brothers.

“Duotones,” produced by Preston Glass and Narada Michael Walden (both best known for their recent hit-making prowess with Kenny G’s labelmates Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin) is his fourth album, but the first to go gold (sales of 500,000). Indeed, it is looking like a new life for Kenny G. “The song represents the start of a new life to me. This record really broke the rules,” Kenny G said in a recent phone interview from Cincinatti, noting that the piece was inspired by a decision to make the move from Seattle, his birthplace, to Los Angeles.

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“I’d always thought that if I had a hit with an instrumental, that it would either be a dance tune or taken from a movie score. His label, Arista Records, he claimed, had “pushed for more vocals on ‘Duotones.’ ” That the biggest hit on that album would be the gently melodic, yuppie-jazz-oriented “Songbird,” was a shock, he admitted. While he had racked up modest hits in the past, including the 1984 Kashif-produced “Hi, How Ya Doin’ ” and last year’s remake of Junior Walker’s “What Does It Take to Win Your Love,” both were funky, dance tunes featuring black R&B singers.

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While an engineered “duet” with the late Louis Armstrong on “What a Wonderful World” took a lot of heat-enlisting jazz history’s greatest heavyweight in a bid to support the leading light of the oft sneered-at smooth-jazz genre-it’s unlikely that the highbrow jazz world’s umbrage has done much to hurt the album’s popularity.Nobody was more surprised than R&B /jazz saxophonist Kenny G (ne Gorelick) when “Songbird,” a soothingly airy instrumental from his current “Duotones” album, cracked Billboard’s Top 20 pop chart-and subsequently became the biggest hit of his career. There’s also Christmas and New Year’s fare sprinkled in, and more cameos from George Benson, Peabo Bryson, and Earth, Wind & Fire. The soprano sax showman’s earliest ballad breakthroughs “Songbird” and “Silhouette,” his instrumental rendition of “My Heart Will Go On,” the mechanized funk of “Against Doctor’s Orders,” the cover of Average White Band's “Picking Up the Pieces” with David Sanborn, and his catchy Chaka Khan version of Christina Aguilera's “Beautiful” are all points plotting the smooth-jazz star's trajectory. Kenny G’s music has been so ubiquitous since the early '80s that it’s hardly surprising The Essential Kenny G plays out almost as an unwitting pop-culture chronicle.