A little rhythm from Kenny G

NEW YORK -- Smooth jazz star Kenny G makes an unlikely rebel. But he had to put his sax down when his longtime label insisted he do yet another album of standards.

The G-man saw no point in following Rod Stewart, Barry Manilow and other older artists down that path. So he got an amicable divorce from Arista Records and returned to making original music.

“All my success in the past . . . have always been my original compositions, played the way that I play, and people seem to connect with that,” said Kenny G. “I lost sight of that a little bit and I’m glad to be going back to my roots and re-establishing the integrity that I’ve had in my music.”

His new album, “Rhythm & Romance” -- his debut for Concord/Starbucks Entertainment -- is not only the 51-year-old saxophonist’s first album of original music since 2002, but it also finds him exploring new territory in Latin music.

“I love the way the saxophone feels with a Latin rhythm, and I felt maybe I can do something like that, but of course do my thing and have it sound different than anything else,” he said. “You’ve got to continually try to reinvent yourself.

“I always thought that my music could have a little bit more rhythm and a little less ballads. There’s a lot of really up-tempo songs . . . and much more improvisation on this record.”

The new record marks the end of his 25-year relationship with music mogul Clive Davis, who first spotted the saxophonist when he was a sideman in Jeff Lorber’s jazz-fusion band and released his self-titled debut album in 1982.

Their partnership resulted in 26 albums -- with sales totaling more than 75 million records -- including his 1986 breakthrough, “Duotones,” which went multi-platinum thanks largely to the success of “Songbird”; the Grammy-winning 1992 “Breathless,” the all-time bestselling instrumental album; and 1994’s “Miracles: The Holiday Album,” which put the Jewish musician right behind Elvis Presley on the list of top-selling Christmas albums in the U.S.

But more recently, the saxophonist says he had felt “handcuffed” by having to play cover tunes on which he couldn’t stray far from the melody. He said that Arista insisted on him doing standards albums such as the 2006 “I’m in the Mood for Love . . . The Most Romantic Melodies of All Time.”

“Unfortunately, I fell into a category with Arista of ‘Well, you can’t really do original material anymore,’ ” he said. “It was tough to convince them that I’m not a Barry Manilow or a Rod Stewart, who had tremendous success with their cover tunes. . . . I really don’t think the world was waiting for me to do my instrumental version of that same idea.

“I knew that doing a Latin album of original material was going to be an amazing project . . . but Clive and the guys at Arista were not interested at all. I said, ‘Well, I have to do this album, so we’re going to have to get a friendly divorce.’ ”

The saxophonist and his longtime collaborator, pianist Walter Afanasieff, composed a collection of love songs with a Latin twist, including such spicy up-tempo tunes as “Sax-o-Loco” and “Salsa Kenny.”

In the studio, the saxophonist was joined by Latin music stars including guitarist Ramon Stagnaro; percussionists Michito Sanchez and Paulinho Da Costa; and former Weather Report drummer Alex Acuna, who added samba, salsa and bossa nova rhythms.

“Personally, I think that this is one of the best albums that Kenny has done in years,” said Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks Entertainment. “It’s kind of a return for Kenny back to doing original music that is really what he built his reputation and credibility about.”