What Is Lenny Pickett's Net Worth and Salary?
Lenny Pickett is an American musician, composer, arranger, music director, and teacher who has a net worth of $3 million. Lenny Pickett first gained fame as a member of the band Tower of Power. Today, he is best known for being part of the "Saturday Night Live" band, a position he has held since 1985. He became the band's musical director in 1995 and also occasionally appeared on "Late Night with David Letterman" in the 1980s. Pickett has no formal musical training and did not attend college or high school past the 9th grade. He joined Tower of Power at 18 and performed with Elton John as well as David Bowie, Talking Heads, and Paul McCartney. Lenny is also a professor of jazz saxophone at New York University. He performed the saxophone solo on Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)," even though Kenny G appeared in the music video performing his part.
SNL Salary
As of this writing, Lenny Pickett's salary per episode of "Saturday Night Live" is $10,000. That works out to around $200,000 per year.
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Early Life
Lenny Pickett was born on April 10, 1954, in Las Cruces, New Mexico. His family later moved to California, and he grew up in Berkeley. After completing his first year of high school, he decided to drop out and abandoned any future plans of attending college. At the time, Lenny was already heavily interested in playing music despite never having taken a formal lesson or undergone any training. After dropping out of high school, he took jazz lessons from Bert Wilson, a jazz saxophonist who was well-known for his ability to play deftly in the altissimo register. Other than these lessons, Pickett was entirely self-taught on the saxophone, and he devoted hours a day to honing his craft.
Tower of Power
While still a teenager, Pickett began playing gigs in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1970s. During this time, he met the members of Tower of Power. Because a member of the band was leaving, Lenny was invited to join as a replacement. Tower of Power was already very popular in the Bay area by the time Pickett joined, and the move helped elevate his career. He eventually came to lead the horn section in the band throughout the rest of the 1970s and into the early 1980s. In addition to making their own music, Tower of Power also operated as a popular session band for musicians from multiple genres of music like soul, rhythm and blues, and funk. They sometimes played with musicians like Elton John during this time.
Tower of Power had eight songs land on the "Billboard Hot 100." They toured extensively during the 1970s and 1980s and consistently released both studio and live albums during this time. Pickett remained in the band for about 10 years before departing in the 1980s.
"Saturday Night Live"
In 1985, Pickett joined the "Saturday Night Live" Band as a saxophonist. In 1995, when G.E. Smith was fired, he was promoted to serve as the band's musical director, and he has remained in that role ever since.
In addition to his work with "Saturday Night Live," Lenny has also composed music for his own group, the Borneo Horns. He has been commissioned to write works mixing classical and popular music for a variety of musical ensembles like the New Century Saxophone Quartet. He has also written music for theatre and has collaborated with dancers, filmmakers, and poets. Given his extensive musical expertise, Lenny joined the faculty of New York University as an adjunct faculty member of jazz studies.
