{"id":30648,"date":"2025-11-01T00:11:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T07:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/?p=30648"},"modified":"2025-10-29T12:32:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T19:32:04","slug":"dave-koz-on-collaborating-with-bob-james-bruno-mars-and-rebecca-jade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/dave-koz-on-collaborating-with-bob-james-bruno-mars-and-rebecca-jade\/","title":{"rendered":"Dave Koz on Collaborating with Bob James, Bruno Mars, and Rebecca Jade"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dave Koz at Humphreys. Photo by Donna Daly.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

As seen on his tours with Summer Horns, acclaimed saxophonist Dave Koz loves to collaborate with his musical friends. He\u2019s worked with a long list of music icons from Herb Alpert to Rod Stewart, earlier this year releasing an album with legendary pianist Bob James, titled Just Us<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBob and I have known each other for a very long time,\u201d Koz noted. \u201cWe recorded Just Us<\/em> all live in his living room in upstate Michigan. And it was a completely new experience for the both of us,\u201d he continued. \u201cBoth of us have made a lot of records over the years. We\u2019ve collaborated before, but this pushed us into a new territory where we had nowhere to hide, there was no net. It was totally raw. The recording was capturing live music, two musicians just communicating with each other. And, in many ways, we found the sound that our instruments made together, really intoxicating without any interference from any other instrument or musician. So, we kind of got really excited about the sound that we were making and wanted to make more of it. Before we turned around, we had this album, which is completely different for both of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Koz puts the album\u2019s success down to \u201c\u2026the fact that [Bob James] is one of the great legends of our world. He\u2019s also 85 years old. Can you believe it? And he\u2019s as alive and as curious and as engaged as anybody half his age. He\u2019s just a wonderful gentleman of jazz and a great mentor to so many, including me. I learned volumes from him on this project. So, I think a lot of it has to do with us coming together and doing something that\u2019s very meaningful to both of us and that the audience has responded positively. It\u2019s really, really, great, especially considering that this album sounds very different from anything we\u2019ve ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Koz and James’ new album, Just Us.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Koz has worked with many artists over the decades. Who is a dream collaborator that he hasn\u2019t gotten to yet? \u201cI think in those kind of questions, you\u2019ve got to go with the first thing that comes to your mind. And the person that popped into my mind was Bruno Mars,\u201d Koz said. \u201cIt\u2019s because I think that Bruno, he\u2019s an old soul. He\u2019s definitely making music that has respect for the music of yesteryear. He\u2019s putting his own unique spin on it. And he\u2019s an incredible songwriter and an incredible performer, incredible singer. And those are the kind of people that are at the top of my list.\u201d<\/p>\n

One person that Koz has worked extensively with is San Diego-based singer Rebecca Jade. Amongst other projects, she was featured singer on his 2022 single, \u201cHappy Xmas (War Is Over) \/ Imagine.\u201d \u201cOh my gosh, I worship Rebecca Jade, I love her so much,\u201d Koz said. \u201cShe\u2019s been a staple of our Christmas shows for the last four years. She started out as a background singer on our cruises going back probably ten years ago. I\u2019ve just been such a fan of hers. And in any way that I can to lift her up and put her in front of people that can know and see what I\u2019ve seen since the very first day that I saw her sing, which is this beautiful, talented, effortless woman who can do it all. She can sing anything,\u201d he remarked. \u201cI\u2019ve been so happy to see how much she\u2019s grown as an artist and in her own recording career and in her own shows. She\u2019s become really one to watch in the world of contemporary jazz and modern R&B music. So, I couldn\u2019t be more proud of her,\u201d Koz said.<\/p>\n

www.davekoz.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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Bart Mendoza is a music journalist whose work has appeared in numerous publications, from the <\/em>San Diego Union Tribune to Great Britain\u2019s <\/em>Shindig magazine. As a musician he has toured the world during the 1980s with Manual Scan, the \u201990s with the Shambles, and currently performs with True Stories.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As seen on his tours with Summer Horns, acclaimed saxophonist Dave Koz loves to collaborate with his musical friends. He\u2019s worked with a long list of music icons from Herb Alpert to Rod Stewart, earlier this year releasing an album with legendary pianist Bob James, titled Just Us. \u201cBob and I have known each other for a very long time,\u201d Koz noted. \u201cWe recorded Just Us all live in his living room in upstate Michigan. And it was a completely new experience for the both of us,\u201d he continued. \u201cBoth of us have made a lot of records over the years. We\u2019ve collaborated before, but this pushed us into a new territory where we had nowhere to hide, there was no net. It was totally raw. The recording was capturing live music, two musicians just communicating with each other. And, in many ways, we found the sound that our instruments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30655,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fyi"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30648"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30658,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30648\/revisions\/30658"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}