Arena of Stars, Genting Highlands
Saturday 26th April 2008
by Johan Nasir
Sadly, news of Kenny G performing in Genting's Arena of Stars somehow did not reach quite a number of people who only either found out too late or after the event. That somehow did not matter as it did not affect the full house turnout filling up the 6000 capacity venue. This being his second time performing in Malaysia was likely the factor why a number of others gave it a miss but it just goes to show his huge fan base in this region.
I missed it the last time and an opportunity to catch him perform, with the thoughtful invitation from Genting, was something I just couldn't pass up. The show was supposed to begin at 8pm but due to the arrival of our royal guests, the show started slightly later than planned. Lights went out at 8.30pm and in typical concert fashion, everyone started screaming like it was a rock concert.
Catching the audience by surprise, he started blowing his first note in the dark and no one knew where he was until the spot light came on guiding him to enter the hall from behind the audience much to the their delight. It was rather hilarious to see the media photographers who were all standing by near the stage scrambling in the opposite direction to snap their shots. Hang on, I was one of them too!
Kenny started the set with "Home" and continued walking through the audience and followed up with "Silhouette" and held a long E note on his soprano saxophone for what felt like forever. It had the audience amazed as to how he held his breath and the continuous note for over 5 minutes while casually shaking hands with the crowd, greeting the royal guests, waving his hands in the air to the audience and went up on stage, all while still holding that continuous single note.
He then carried on with the next few songs "Sade" and "Everlasting" and paused to finally speak to his audience saying "Thank You, Hello, It's good to be back in Malaysia, Happy to be here in Genting and Hope everyone enjoyed the show so far and with permission, he's going to present the next song called Havana". Entirely in Malay! The crowd laughed along with him as he made funny gestures to remember some of his words but he pulled it off and was rewarded with a roaring clap and appreciation from the whole audience.
Taking a quick break, we were left to be entertained by percussionist Ron Powell, who had his brilliant solo moment taunting and teasing the crowd to sing along until he went into full swing display of his real talent complete with a juggling act. Kenny came back on with a few more tracks and continued his serenade with his popular collection from previous albums with "G-Bop", "Malibu Dreams", "Forever" and "Sister Rose".
Being a concert in Genting, it was no surprise that the majority of the guests were Chinese and when Kenny continued with "Jasmine Flower", it just hit the right note with the audience who were humming along to his song. It was after "The Walk" that he took a break to explain that the soprano saxophone he was using on stage was the very same one he used since his high school days.
Kenny demonstrated the long note stunt he did at the beginning and explained how he was able to hold it for so long. He holds the world record for holding the longest E note for 45 minutes 47 seconds through a technique called "Nasal Cam", (breathing circularly rapidly in via the nose while continuously exhaling via the mouth).
The stage setup was changed slightly for his next set, a medley of songs from his Cuban influenced latest album, "Rhythm & Romance". Pianist Robert Damper then continued with his melodious solo set. His band was also made up of Swedish Bassist Vail Johnsson, Ron Powell on Percussions, Guitarist John Raymond all of whom Kenny has played together with for more than 20 years touring the world with the exception of Drummer Daniel Bejarano who only recently joined the band last year.
The highlight of the evening was Kenny's “duet” with Louis Armstrong, courtesy of original video footage of "What A Wonderful World" on the screen. Seeing Louis & hearing it live, with the overtones of Kenny's saxophone just gave it that whole emotional dimension.
The upbeat "Pick up the Pieces" was a perfect follow up after that on the Alto Sax and while Vail did his Bass solo set, Kenny did his magic act of running around the back to do his walk through the crowd again. By this time, some of the Datin's and Aunties were already on the verge of passing out from the excitement of having Kenny serenade them up close and personal.
He said his farewell at 10.30pm. A two hour concert. Well worth it I thought. Naturally, we all wanted more and chanted for Kenny to come back on to do his encore and he did it with "Cadenza", "Songbird" and the anthem from Titanic the movie, "My Heart Will Go On". It was a "You just had to be there!" awesome evening.
One thing has to be said though; the coordination for the autograph signing with Kenny could have been better strategised by the Genting staff. There was very little proper crowd management and even though there was a visible line, there should have been signage and enough security staff at hand to control the ensuing chaos. Malaysians being Malaysians simply refuse to understand the concept of queuing up. The irony of it was those who jumped queue made the most noise about the signing session being not properly organized simply because they didn't want to go to the back of the long line and decided to push those who queued up properly to satisfy their own kiasu needs. It was a rather disgusting sight to see after such a beautiful evening. Thankfully the autographs made up for it.
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