Ringer Films and HBO's third installment of the music box series is listening to Kenny G.

The film takes a humorous but incisive look at the saxophonist Kenny G, the best-selling instrumental artist of all time, and quite possibly one of the most famous living musicians.

Listening to Kenny G. unravels the allure of the man who played jazz so smoothly that a whole new genre formed around him and questions

fundamental assumptions about art and excellence in the process. You can find listening to Kenny G

on HBO or HBO Max on Thursday, December 2nd. Quick story, a tangent. It's borderline. So I was in

choir in high school, right? Choir was a big whoop. Choir was cool in my high

school. Transitive property, I was cool in high school. So my sophomore year, I'm 15, and I get into

the men's chorus, prestigious. And that year, the men's chorus gets to take a trip to Chicago.

We get on a bus. We're in suburban Cleveland. We play Yucre for five hours or so on the bus to Chicago. We sing Ave Maria at some choir convention. We eat dinner at medieval times or a medieval times type establishment where you eat giant chicken legs and drink from chalices and shit. The bad boys in the

choir call the waitresses wenches. This detail is so implausible to me now that I've decided

it must be true. It's crossed that implausibility threshold. Why would I make that up? And we also

get to go see The Phantom of the Opera, a Chicago production of the popular Andrew Lloyd-Weber musical,

The Phantom of the Opera. We arrive late, as I recall, due to a ticketing snafu. So picture

80-odd, doofy high school boys from out of town crashing the Phantom of the Opera midway

through the first act. But all I ask of you is a jam,

the chandelier drops, that's dope. We get back on the bus. We play Yucre for five hours, and for several

weeks, everybody's got the Phantom of the Opera on the brain. So back at school, shortly thereafter,

one day I walk into the choir room. It's between school periods or after hours. And nobody's in there but this kid, Adam, an upperclassman, a frequent soloist, a men's chorus thought leader, etc. Adam doesn't see me. He's stacking chairs or something. And he is singing quite loudly to nobody a song from the Phantom of the Opera.

I believe he is singing the Music of the Night, like so.

Open up your mind.

Let your fantasies unwind.

Except that Adam has changed the lyrics to the music of the night.

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