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David Sanborn, a six-time Grammy Award-winning alto saxophonist, established a career blending jazz with instrumental pop and R&B, and was largely influential on pop, R&B, and crossover players for over two decades.
Six-time Grammy Award Winner David Sanborn partnered with KCC Productions, a well-known concert and festival production company, to headline Jazz Fest Pompano Beach 2023.
Sanborn played a Selmer Mark VI alto saxophone, and in the early 1980s, was endorsed by Yamaha, playing their saxophones on albums "As We Speak" and "Backstreet."
David William Sanborn was born on July 30, 1945, in Tampa, Florida. He grew up in Kirkwood, Missouri. At age three, he contracted polio, which led to him being confined to an iron lung for a year and left him with impaired respiration and a shorter left arm. Doctors recommended he take up a wind instrument to improve his breathing, leading him to choose the saxophone at age eleven. By fourteen, he was proficient enough to play with blues musicians in local clubs. Sanborn studied music at Northwestern University and later transferred to the University of Iowa, where he studied under saxophonist J. R. Monterose. Sanborn began his professional career as a session musician, starting in the late 1960s. In 1967, he joined The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, appearing with them at the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969 and recording on four of their albums until 1971. His reputation grew through collaborations with a wide range of artists across various genres. He performed on Stevie Wonder’s “Talking Book” in 1972 and David Bowie’s “Young Americans” and James Taylor’s “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)” in 1975. The same year, he released his first solo album, “Taking Off,” which became a jazz/funk classic.
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