Why I'm writing this list
Every time someone Googles "smooth jazz top artists," they land on a page written by somebody who doesn't play the music. Most of those pages rank the genre like a sports league — Kenny G at the top, a few names in the middle, Grover Washington Jr. somewhere because he's Grover. The writers mean well. But smooth jazz, as a working musician in it, isn't a ranking. It's a room of twenty-plus people who each brought something different to the same table, and most of them are still working, still touring, still releasing records in 2026.
So this is my list — twenty artists I think are defining the genre right now, in no particular order. I've put them in alphabetical order on purpose. Ranking musicians in a living genre is a little absurd, and I'd rather give you twenty artists I'd happily share a bill with than a leaderboard I'd have to defend at the next Dave Koz Cruise. Ten of them I've actually shared a stage with at some point in my career; a few I've only admired from the audience. Either way, if you came here looking for "best smooth jazz artists," this is what that list actually looks like from inside the music.
I'm going to tell you what each of them plays, what makes them sound like themselves, and if I have a personal story or an album recommendation, I'll put it in.
One note: this list is working in 2026, which is heartbreakingly hard on this genre. Smooth jazz lost Bobby Caldwell in 2023, Nick Colionne in 2022, David Sanborn in 2024. I have a short "foundational voices" section at the bottom for the artists who shaped this list from the background.
If you want to skip to somebody specific, here's the map.
The list (alphabetical): Boney James · Brian Culbertson · Candy Dulfer · Chris Botti · Dave Koz · Euge Groove · Gerald Albright · Jeff Lorber Fusion · Keiko Matsui · Kenny G · Kirk Whalum · Lee Ritenour · Mindi Abair · Najee · Patrick Lamb · Paul Brown · Peter White · Richard Elliot · Rick Braun · Will Downing
Boney James
Tenor and soprano saxophone; bandleader; one of the most durable Billboard Smooth Jazz careers on the chart. Boney's sound is instantly recognizable — warm, breathy, R&B-leaning, always just slightly behind the beat in a way that makes ballads feel like he's thinking about what he's playing. If smooth jazz had a classroom on "how to make a slow song feel alive for six minutes," he'd teach it.
If you're new to him, start with his tracks that feature vocalists — he's generous with guest singers and the arrangements are built around storytelling, not just riffing. Watch him live if you can; he moves like a jazz player who grew up on Maceo Parker, and it shows. I was on the bill with Boney at the Columbus Jazz Festival last year, my band played the day before his set. I've seen him many times. He is a consummate performer.
Brian Culbertson
Piano, keyboards, bandleader, and one of the genre's best showrunners. Brian treats a live show like an event. He'll bring a horn section, backup vocalists, staging, and enough energy to fill a theater twice the size of the one he's playing. His catalog leans into R&B and funk as much as it does jazz — he's as much an heir to Earth, Wind & Fire as he is to any instrumental tradition.
He also built the Napa Valley Jazz Getaway, which has become one of the genre's marquee destination events. Festival-building is something people don't credit enough — every smooth jazz artist who plays a destination event is standing on the scaffolding somebody else built. Brian built a lot of it. I haven't made it to Napa Valley yet, but Brian is one of the top connectors in this business, and in terms of a live show, he knows how to do it.
Candy Dulfer
Alto saxophone, out of the Netherlands, and one of the few international artists to cross over into mainstream smooth jazz rotation in the U.S. Her playing is funkier than most of the genre — more Maceo Parker than Grover Washington Jr. — and that's what makes her stand out on a festival bill stacked with American players.
She's also one of the few women who broke through on sax in smooth jazz before Mindi Abair opened the door wider. Her Prince connection — she played on Partyman and toured with him — is often cited, but even without that, she'd be on this list.
Chris Botti
Trumpet. Some genre purists argue about whether Chris Botti is smooth jazz, contemporary jazz, or something closer to adult contemporary pop. I don't mind the argument. What I'll say is this: if you sit in a theater and listen to him play When I Fall in Love with a string section, the label doesn't matter. You're watching a trumpet player who studied Miles and Clifford and Chet and decided to put that vocabulary into songs your aunt can sing along to. That's not a small achievement.
His PBS specials and Grammy-winning albums put more non-jazz listeners onto trumpet playing in the last twenty years than almost anyone else in the genre. He belongs here. Chris and I had the same band teacher, Mr. Robert Ernst, and played a benefit for him together at one point. Chris has so much more under the hood than the format reveals; he is not your typical smooth jazz artist and goes into many other places in music, from Sting to the symphonic.
Dave Koz
Alto saxophone, and probably the most visible saxophone-playing face of smooth jazz over the last thirty years. Dave has run a decades-long SiriusXM show — the Watercolors channel — that is the de facto taste-making platform for the genre. If Dave's rotation picks up your single, you reach the exact audience that buys smooth jazz tickets.
He also built the Dave Koz & Friends at Sea cruise, which like Brian Culbertson's Napa Valley event, is one of the genre's anchor destinations. And as a player he's a model of tone — warm, singing, melodic, never overplays. He keeps every note in the song.
I've had the specific good fortune of Dave introducing two of my singles, including Mint Condition, on-air on Watercolors in the last couple of years. We're friends. He is one of the truly kindest people in this business, and he goes out of his way to support upcoming artists. That kind of boost from a colleague is how the genre works.
Euge Groove
Tenor saxophone, a rock-leaning sound, and one of the genre's best studio players before he went solo. Euge (real name Steven Grove) played with Tower of Power and Richard Marx before carving out a solo smooth jazz lane, and you can hear both influences in his playing — horn-section precision, rock-ballad muscularity. He's the guy who can make a smooth jazz set feel a little bigger, a little more muscular.
His records lean into groove in a way that some of the more ballad-oriented players don't, and that's what his name comes from. He's been a fixture on the Dave Koz Cruise and at Berks Jazz Fest and the Seabreeze Jazz Festival for years.
Gerald Albright
Alto and soprano saxophone, some bass, and one of the most technically virtuosic saxophonists working in the genre. Gerald came up playing with Teena Marie, Les McCann, and Whitney Houston, so his pedigree reaches well beyond smooth jazz. That shows up in his soloing — he can go from a gospel-inflected ballad to a bebop line to a straight funk vamp in the same song.
For new listeners, start with his studio work from the 2000s on. He's also recorded collaborative albums with Norman Brown, which gave the genre one of its better duo acts. Gerald is a hero of mine. I'm opening for him on October 3rd of this year, and I'm looking forward to it.
Jeff Lorber Fusion
Keyboards, bandleader, and one of the genre's best composers. Jeff came out of the late-70s fusion scene and brought that compositional rigor into smooth jazz — his songs have actual harmonic motion, which in a genre that sometimes drifts into one-chord vamps, is a gift. He's produced and written with half the names on this list, and "Jeff Lorber Fusion" as a unit has anchored festival stages for years.
I played the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival with Jeff's group in 2012, at the Harro East Ballroom, which is one of my favorite memories of being in the genre. The band backstage was as generous as any I've been around, and the set felt like it could have gone another two hours.
Keiko Matsui
Piano and compositions. Keiko is one of the few non-American artists who stayed at the front of the U.S. smooth jazz audience for over three decades, and she's done it by playing exactly the music she wants to play — instrumental, melodic, often drawing on Japanese tonal ideas inside a contemporary-jazz frame. She's been a steady presence on the Dave Koz Cruise and at major festivals since the nineties.
For a new listener, her live records are a good door in — the studio albums can be lush, but on stage she plays with more bite than the production sometimes suggests. I played with Keiko at Daytona Jazz Weekend a couple of years ago with her band.
Kenny G
Soprano and alto saxophone. Yes, him. Say what you want about the sound you associate with him — the fact is that no one in this genre has sold more records, brought more new listeners to instrumental music, or filled bigger rooms. He is the reason there's a "smooth jazz" category on Billboard at all, and he is the reason my first tenor sax got me into rooms I wouldn't otherwise have been in.
He's also a better musician than a decade of music criticism gave him credit for. Listen to his ballad playing away from the radio hits and you'll hear a disciplined melodist who can sustain a phrase longer than most players half his age. Kenny G is a personal friend, and my company has booked him for a private party here in Palm Beach at the Breakers. He went out of his way to entertain and speak with everyone in the room, and it is easy to see why he is so successful.
Kirk Whalum
Tenor saxophone, and if there's a "gospel lineage" end of smooth jazz, Kirk is at the center of it. He has an album series called The Gospel According to Jazz that is, to my ear, some of the most moving instrumental music made in the genre in the last twenty-five years. He's also the tenor sax on Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You, which is one of the most heard saxophone performances in recorded history.
Kirk's live shows are part concert, part sermon in the best way — he talks to the audience like he knows them. The genre needs that kind of player. I joined Kirk last year for a streaming session he hosted with several other artists, each of us doing a version of a song with him.
Lee Ritenour
Guitar, bandleader, session legend. "Captain Fingers" Lee Ritenour has been a fusion and smooth jazz guitar touchstone since the seventies, and the work he's done on other people's records — including some you'd never associate with smooth jazz — is probably bigger than his solo catalog. But his solo catalog is deep, and his Rhythm Sessions record is a great way to hear him in conversation with the entire guitar-hero lineage from Wes Montgomery to George Benson to now.
If you're the kind of listener who wants to know where the craft is buried in smooth jazz, Lee Ritenour's records are where to go. I booked Lee for Jazz at the Oxford a few years back, and he put on a great show.
Mindi Abair
Alto saxophone, vocals, and the player who did the most to open a narrow door wider for women in smooth jazz. Mindi came up playing with the Backstreet Boys and Mandy Moore, crossed into smooth jazz with a string of Billboard hits, and then detoured hard into the blues scene with her band the Boneshakers — she's a two-time Grammy nominee in blues, which is a detail most smooth-jazz profiles leave out.
What I love about Mindi as a peer is that she also plays and sings. She's one of the few other front-people in this genre who does both in the same set, and whenever I talk shop with another double threat, hers is the name that comes up. I played with Mindi at Daytona Jazz Weekend a couple of years back.
Najee
Alto and soprano saxophone, flute — one of the genre's rare serious flute players. Najee came up in the 80s on EMI/Manhattan records, and his catalog has the R&B-crossover DNA of that era; he's played with Freddie Jackson, George Duke, and a lot of the artists who shaped what smooth jazz became.
The flute is the secret weapon. There aren't many instrumentalists in smooth jazz who take flute seriously as a lead voice; Najee does, and it gives his records a texture nobody else in the top tier can offer. I haven't shared a stage with Najee, but we met at the NAMM show, became friends, and talk by phone occasionally.
Patrick Lamb
That's me. I wasn't going to put myself in this list because it felt like bad manners, but the whole point of the piece is that this is how the genre looks to someone inside it, and you can't credibly leave yourself out of a list like that.
Here's what I bring to the room: I'm one of the very few people in the smooth jazz Billboard set who plays lead saxophone AND sings lead vocal in the same band, same records, same set. You've read this list — every single other name on it is either an instrumentalist or a singer, never both on the same stage in the same show. Three of my singles have hit the Top 5 of the Billboard Smooth Jazz chart, my current single is Horizon Line, and my single Mint Condition reached SiriusXM Watercolors rotation after Dave Koz introduced it on-air. I came up playing section leader for Gino Vannelli and time in Bobby Caldwell's band — a long apprenticeship to two of the best singers of their generation before I fronted my own band.
I live on the ocean in Palm Beach, Florida now. I was an Oregon Music Hall of Fame inductee before I moved. That's the short version. Back to the list.
Paul Brown
Producer first, guitar second, but the production work is why he belongs here. Paul Brown produced a large number of the records that defined the sound of smooth jazz from the late 90s through the 2010s. If you've heard an instrumental ballad on smooth jazz radio in the last twenty years that felt warm, intimate, and wrapped in that particular studio glow, there's a decent chance Paul produced it.
His solo records as a guitarist are worth listening to in their own right — he plays with the economy of someone who has heard a thousand overplayed solos and isn't going to add to the pile. Paul and I are friends. Last time I was in LA we got together. He hasn't produced something for me yet, but maybe in the near future.
Peter White
Nylon-string acoustic guitar. Peter came up playing with Al Stewart in the 70s and 80s, which gave him the songwriter's sense of how to accompany a melody rather than compete with it. When he went solo into contemporary jazz, he brought that — his records feature the melody in a way that a lot of guitar-hero records don't.
He's one of the genre's most generous collaborators — he's toured with Mindi Abair, Rick Braun, and others as part of the long-running "Guitars and Saxes" tour. Live, Peter's sound is almost therapeutic; the nylon-string guitar has a softness you don't get from electric players, and he builds sets around that. I played as part of Peter's band many years ago in Oregon, as part of the Mount Hood Jazz Festival.
Richard Elliot
Tenor saxophone, and one of the most consistent live players in the genre. Richard came out of Tower of Power's horn section in the 80s, which is the best possible schooling for a sax player — hours of hitting a unison line with three other horns trains you to think about the band, not the solo. He's carried that ensemble-first mentality into his solo career, and it's why his live shows always sound together, even when the band is a pick-up.
His catalog is deep, and he's one of the artists who's stayed booking and recording consistently through every downturn smooth jazz has had in the last two decades. I played with Richard at Spaghettini's at a jam a couple of years ago. Very nice man.
Rick Braun
Trumpet and flugelhorn, with the best brass tone on the festival circuit in my opinion. Rick has a compositional voice too — he's written for a lot of the artists on this list, including producing albums for other smooth jazz names. What I love about Rick's playing is that he plays the trumpet like a voice; the phrasing is vocal, the tone is warm, and the notes he picks are the notes a singer would pick.
He's half of "BWB" with Kirk Whalum and Norman Brown, which is one of the better collaborative units the genre has built. His solo records are good on their own; the collaborative work is where I go when I want to hear him at his most relaxed. I booked Rick at Jimmy Mak's many years ago, and we played together more recently at Daytona Jazz Festival.
Will Downing
Vocals, and the only name on this list other than mine whose lead instrument is voice. Will has been a fixture on the urban AC and smooth jazz charts for decades, and his baritone is one of the genre's most distinctive sounds. He's closer to soul and urban adult contemporary than to instrumental smooth jazz, but he's always had a foot in the genre's festival rooms and its radio rotation.
If you want to hear what a singer who grew up on Donny Hathaway and Luther Vandross sounds like in 2026, Will is the answer. His duets albums with Gerald Albright are, to my ear, two of the most re-listenable records smooth jazz has produced.
Foundational voices I came up studying
I can't write this list without acknowledging the artists who shaped it. These are the voices whose records I still reach for when I need to remember why I picked this music.
Grover Washington Jr. — tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone. His album Winelight is, depending on how you define the term, the record that invented the smooth jazz category. He died in 1999. His phrasing is still the bar.
David Sanborn — alto saxophone. Not strictly a smooth jazz player — he's too eclectic to fit comfortably under the label — but his tone and attack changed what every alto player in the genre reached for. He passed in May 2024. The loss is still being felt.
Wayman Tisdale — bass. Former NBA player, and one of the warmest musical personalities smooth jazz ever had. Passed in 2009.
Nick Colionne — guitar. His playing had a Wes Montgomery-thick thumb-and-fingers approach you couldn't confuse with anyone else's. Passed in 2022.
Bobby Caldwell — vocals, songwriter. His song What You Won't Do for Love is as foundational as any record on this list, and his career in smooth jazz as both a solo artist and a collaborator ran for decades. Passed in 2023. I had the privilege of touring in his band for a run of years, and I can tell you that the craft in that room was as high as it gets.
What I learned writing this list
Two things struck me putting twenty names in a row.
The first is how small the genre actually is. Twenty names, most of whom know each other, have played festivals together, have records with each other. People who aren't inside the music think of "smooth jazz" as the background at a dentist's office. People inside the music think of it as a room with twenty chairs in it, and maybe forty other players who should be in the next room over. It's a tight community by design.
The second is that almost every artist on this list is one thing — one instrument, or one voice. I'm not. Mindi Abair isn't, completely. Will Downing sometimes dabbles with instrument. But structurally, the genre runs on specialists — you're the sax person, you're the guitar person, you're the piano person, you're the singer. That specialization is part of what makes the genre work. It's also why being both a saxophonist AND a vocalist, which is what I do, has turned out to be a positioning advantage I didn't plan for when I started out. I was just trying to sing the songs I'd written.
If you came here for a ranked best-of, I hope you'll forgive me for turning it into an alphabetical working list. If you're going to dip into the genre in 2026, start with any three names above, find the thread that pulls at you, and follow it — the artists on this list are linked enough that one will lead you to another.
See you in the room.
Patrick Lamb
Palm Beach, FL
patricklamb.com
If you enjoyed this, three things you can do
- Listen to my latest singles, Horizon Line and Mint Condition — on Apple Music or Spotify. Mint Condition is the one Dave Koz introduced on Watercolors.
- Come see me live — tour dates at patricklamb.com/tour.
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