To Market, to Market . . .

In the not-always-super-profitable world of jazz, Joshua Redman has proven to be somewhat of an anomaly. He makes money--lots of it.

In his six short years on the music scene, the 27-year-old saxophonist has become one of Warner Bros. Records’ most important artists, producing sales worldwide of 500,000 units.

While these numbers may not be phenomenal for some pop artists, or even for quasi-jazz performers such as Kenny G, they are downright stupendous for an authentic jazz musician such as Redman. Since his graduation from Harvard in 1990, where he earned summa cum laude and phi beta kappa honors, he has become the most visible, best-selling mainstream jazz performer since the arrival of Wynton Marsalis in the ‘80s.

Some might wonder what the attraction is. One answer came from a Generation-X clerk in a Carmel clothing shop last month when Redman was an artist in residence at the Monterey Jazz Festival.

“Did you see Joshua Redman [in concert]?” she asked of a customer. “There’s something about him. His music really reaches out and touches me.”

Redman’s performance at the House of Blues the following week was an instant revelation of the extent to which he “reaches out and touches” not just Gen-Xers, but a broad-based audience.

Roving the stage from one side to the other, raising his tenor saxophone high, dipping it down to the floor, he used the music to connect with his listeners. The crowd reaction was warm and amiable, responding with good-natured cheers whenever he approached.

But there was none of the over-baked theatricality of some rock performances in Redman’s presentation. What came through, instead, was a combination of musicality and communication, with the music front and center. Redman projects, with no apparent effort on his part, an innocent appeal. And he projects that appeal in tandem with jazz that manages to have an inherent fascination--a strong rhythmic, melodic peg--without descending into blatant audience manipulation.

The critical response to Redman, in fact, has generally praised his creative skills rather than his commercial achievements. “Every time you hear him, he’s at a higher level,” wrote Peter Watrous in the New York Times. Other favorable observations were offered by GQ magazine: “a fully formed master of the tenor saxophone”; Time magazine: “ . . . fearless improvisational skill and mature melodic sense”; the Associated Press: “the crown prince of the tenor saxophone”; and, most telling of all, veteran guitarist Pat Metheny’s description of Redman as “the most important new musician in 20 years.”

“For me,” says Redman, “everything comes back to emotional expression and communication. Any music that is expressive is communicative. Sometimes jazz is so demanding technically that the expressive part gets left behind. And I try to make sure that I don’t get those priorities mixed up.”

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That he has been eminently successful in doing so is reflected in Redman’s remarkable sales figures. His new album, “Freedom in the Groove,” his fifth, debuted earlier this month in the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s influential jazz charts (which indicate sales). And, in the crucial arena of radio airplay, the Gavin charts (which indicate radio play) reported that the album had been added to 76 stations in the first week of release, the highest number of jazz record additions in the history of the chart.

The current success comes on the tail of his best-selling 1994 album “Mood Swing,” which is currently approaching 300,000 copies sold worldwide.

Numbers at this level are rare in jazz, at least in the first few years of release. More commonly, jazz records build up impressive figures over an extended period of time via long-term catalog availability. In Redman’s case, however, his albums have been selling out of the box like pop releases.

Vividly aware that Redman’s initial breakout exceeded everyone’s expectations, Warner Bros. executives are approaching “Freedom in the Groove” with a well-tailored marketing plan. Most major-label albums receive some sort of marketing program outlining promotion, publicity, public relations and retail point of purchase efforts to support a new release.

In the case of jazz acts, such programs can usually be laid out on a single page. But Redman is receiving the kind of attention usually reserved for major pop artists.

“We knew we had something unusual on our hands,” says Matt Pierson, Warner Bros.’ senior vice president and general manager of jazz/U.S., “and we knew that Joshua was becoming a hero to younger audiences, a kind of jazz version of [Detroit Pistons basketball star] Grant Hill. Which was great, a lot better than having a bad guy as a hero.”

Pierson’s plan eventually resulted in pages of marketing strategies involving the usual areas of promotion, publicity and retail. But it was founded upon one important consideration--a consideration that rarely enters the picture with a pop act.

“We decided up front,” says Pierson, “that we had to hit our base market first. We had to take care of the long-term jazz fans.”

Like a presidential campaign which first insures that the vote is safe in friendly states, the initial premise of the Redman strategy was to reach out to receptive jazz fans to let them know--despite the hype and the publicity--that neither the saxophonist nor his record company had any intention of abandoning the core audience.

“With a performer like Joshua,” adds Pierson, “you can’t go directly to a crossover strategy--try to take him into the pop or the NAC [New Adult Contemporary] markets.” Those can be broadly defined as the two best-selling stylistic domains in recorded music.

Pierson’s reference to the importance of sustaining the interest of the jazz audience is apparent in the album itself, which, although it contains some attractive melodies and occasional funk-tinged rhythms, has enough basic, hard-core blowing to fit nicely into the category of jazz recording (see review, Page 71).

For Pierson’s marketing strategy, that fact was an inordinate plus. The generally older, record-buying jazz audience has been presented with an album that meets traditional standards. A younger, club-going audience can focus on the album’s contemporary rhythms and head out to hear Redman in his looser, more charismatic live performances.

With a reliable jazz album in hand, and a performer who can reach out to younger, pop-oriented audiences, Pierson feels he has everything he needs to pursue his plan to reach the jazz audience first, gradually expanding the listenership to include the boomers of the New Adult Contemporary market as well as the Gen-Xers.

Toward that end, the album’s initial promotional tour--which kicked off with the Los Angeles House of Blues date on Sept. 25--concentrates almost entirely upon mixed music venues rather than (as in past Redman tours) the usual jazz clubs.

To continue the election analogy, the second phase of the marketing plan resembles a presidential campaign reaching out to test the waters in states that are not locked onto the assured list.

“We only included one jazz club--Blues Alley in Washington, D.C.--in the itinerary,” says Redman’s manager, Mary Ann Topper of New York’s Jazz Tree. “But we booked Joshua in venues that we thought would attract jazz fans, as well as younger and more pop-oriented listeners.”

Further looking toward younger fans, the House of Blues performance was associated with two Internet events--a Netscape chat and a broadcast of the evening’s two sets over the House of Blues Web site.

Redman has no problems with such marketing strategies.

“Sure there’s a consciousness on my part,” he explains, “that venues such as the House of Blues attract different audiences. But my goal always has been to reach as many people as possible. And working in one single kind of location can hurt that. I don’t want to alienate myself from jazz lovers, I just want to get my music out to as many people as I can.”

If the Warner Bros. strategy is effective, he can pretty well count on that happening--and then some. The multileveled plan is already on track and rolling.

“We’re giving Joshua the same kind of across-the-board media and advertising push that we do for our pop acts,” explains Randall Kennedy, Warner Bros.’ senior director of marketing and sales for jazz. “Targeted mailings, ads for industry and retail, radio promotion, local and regional ads, tour support. The cost of that support, compared to sales, is also the same as for a pop act--ideally around 12% to 15%, or about $1.50 per album. In Joshua’s case, we’re well within that cost area, which is better than we sometimes are able to do with an act we’re trying to break out to a wide market.”

Redman’s tour schedule is already laid out through mid-March, with virtual nonstop dates across the United States and (in early November) Japan. Associated with his traveling schedule, Redman is picking up as many in-store appearance as possible, such as last month’s appearance at Borders Books & Records in Westwood. Figures indicate that concerts and in-stores always have a direct, positive impact upon record sales.

In the print media, there will be Redman stories in Jazz Times and Details, as well as dozens of reviews in other publications. Redman also is associated with Donna Karan’s fashion label DKNY, a connection that resulted in a 1995 Internet broadcast from New York’s Fashion Cafe.

According to Helene Greece, Redman’s publicist, a marketing agreement is currently being discussed that will link the saxophonist with DKNY in an association to be identified as “Partners in Style: Joshua Redman/DKNY.” The connection--an innovative association between a jazz musician and a major fashion designer--calls for DKNY to provide a complete wardrobe for all of Redman’s tours, performances and public appearances. Also in discussion are possible performances by Redman at the openings of DKNY stores, as well as appearances at DKNY fashion shows.

In television, Redman already has been on “Charlie Rose” and efforts are underway to place him on “Rosie O’Donnell” and “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” Redman also made a prominent appearance in Robert Altman’s “Kansas City” feature film, performing in a characterization inspired by Lester Young.

In radio, the album is being serviced not only to the usual jazz stations, but to college radio, NPR, pop and urban outlets.

Given Redman’s extraordinary sales achievement with “Mood Swing,” what kind of level of success would it take to make “Freedom in the Groove” into a “hit album”?

“We’d like to be at the 100,000 level by the end of the year,” says Kennedy. “And, given the relatively longer life of a jazz album, we’d like to see it around the 250,000 level domestically--with similar figures [internationally] for a total of around 500,000 units--by the nine-month stage. But we’re going to have to give it major support.”

A good measure of that support could be provided by a video. But Pierson has not yet placed it on the menu.

“If you spend, say, $30,000 to $60,000 to produce a video,” he says, “you’re going to want to sell 40,000 to 50,000 albums strictly off the strength of the video.” Additional sales, in other words, generated strictly by the presence of the video, in order to justify the additional costs. “And that,” he adds, “can be hard to do.”

One of the problems, reports Kennedy, is that there are limited arenas for the presentation of jazz videos.

“Obviously, if we had a killer concept like Herbie Hancock’s ‘Rock-it,’ ” he notes, “we’d make a video in a flash. And we certainly haven’t ruled one out. But we always have to evaluate where we get the biggest bang for the buck--a video, a college concert tour, a college seminar.”

Once the album has had an opportunity to reach what Pierson describes as the “core jazz audience,” however, remixes of some of the tracks will come into play.

“We’re already working on that,” he adds, “with the idea of remixing some tracks from the album--possibly into a Quiet Storm [radio format] type of remix as well as a funky remix, to hit those kinds of stations.”

The campaign to give Redman mainstream musical identity is a dramatic move for a young man who, a few years ago, was primarily focused upon a career as an attorney. Born in Berkeley on Feb. 1, 1969, the son of avant-garde jazz saxophonist Dewey Redman, he has been playing music, with varying degrees of seriousness, since he was a teenager. But everything changed when he won the 1991 Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition. At that point, law school was put on hold, and Redman--with almost startling ease--became one of the most important new, young figures in jazz.

His current level of achievement--commercial success in jazz without abandoning a firm linkage to the music’s creative roots--places him in a category with Wynton Marsalis, the only other player in the last decade to have similar sales and visibility. And Redman’s current direction clearly is distinct from the classical music and institutional orientation pathway chosen by Marsalis. Not, perhaps, since Miles Davis has a jazz artist had similar potential for widespread prominence and popularity.

Asked if he, like his record company, has come to view himself as a marketable commodity, Redman laughs softly before replying.

“No, not at all,” he says in his characteristically straightforward manner. “I see all this as diversity of experience, and that’s what keeps me excited. I’d be doing what I’m doing with or without all this attention. Because I believe in my music, and, to me, believing in your music is all it really takes to be successful.”