At 19, former baby prodigy Joey Alexander desires the main focus to be on his music and abilities as a jazz composer

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On Wynton Marsalis’s web site, there’s a clip from a 2016 episode of 60 Minutes.

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The jazz nice is sitting at a piano with 12-year-old Indonesian jazz prodigy Joey Alexander. In the course of the clip, which is simply over a minute lengthy, Marsalis is quizzed by Anderson Cooper about his protege. The newsman asks how uncommon it’s for somebody so younger to own these abilities on the earth of jazz. He’s instructed that there has by no means been anybody like him within the historical past of the style.

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“Nobody has ever seen an individual play with that sort of sophistication harmonically, data of the music, and the kind of shaped identification to invent one thing cohesive within the context of (that) time,” Marsalis says, as younger Joey sits in silence.

When reminded of the clip earlier this week in an interview with Postmedia, the now 19-year-old pianist says he has fond reminiscences of the interview and spending the day with Cooper and Marsalis. In fact, at that time in his profession, the main focus was virtually all the time on his youth. Considered one of his on-line bios states “Not many jazz musicians can boast three GRAMMY Award nominations earlier than age 16″ and “At solely 10 years outdated, he was hand-picked to mentor underneath jazz heavyweight Wynton Marsalis.” On the age of 11, a yr earlier than the 60 Minutes particular, Alexander had dazzled crowds on the Montreal and Newport Jazz Festivals. Veteran New York Occasions jazz critic Nate Chinen wrote a profile about him in 2015: “Jazz prodigies not often have full command of their artistry,” he wrote. “For a jazz pianist, the mastery entails a staggering breadth of information about concord, rhythm and orchestration, all converging in an eloquent synthesis. Joey Alexander has a deal with on a great deal of that.”

However, as is commonly the query with baby prodigies, how snug is Alexander with the label? Now that he’s a younger grownup, is he trying ahead to a time when his age will not be the principle subject of dialog?

“Truly, that’s a very good query,” says Alexander, earlier than taking a considerate pause. “All I can say is that I need the main focus to be on being a composer and only a working musician like another musician, striving to get higher of their subject. I assume that’s the factor I need probably the most, (for) folks to focus extra on simply the music. I  all the time prefer to let the music converse.”

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The soft-spoken pianist shall be bringing the Joey Alexander Trio to the Jack Singer Live performance Corridor on April 28 as a part of the Arts Commons Jazz collection. It will likely be his Calgary debut, however he has been enjoying high-profile gigs since he was 10 and Marsalis, who was inventive director of Jazz at Lincoln Heart, noticed Alexander play on a YouTube clip and invited him to play at a Lincoln Heart gala, a pivotal second that, in accordance with the New York Occasions, turned him into an “in a single day sensation.” Alexander moved to New York Metropolis and by 2015 had launched his debut album, My Favorite Issues. Since then, he has performed for President Barack Obama with Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding and for President Invoice Clinton on the Arthur Ashe Studying Heart Gala. He has performed on the Apollo Theatre, Carnegie Corridor and the Grand Outdated Opry.

But it surely could possibly be argued that he has now safely arrived at a brand new part in his profession. Launched in Could 2022, Origin is Alexander’s sixth album and his first to focus solely on his personal compositions. It’s a followup to 2018’s acclaimed Eclipse, during which he wrote six of the 11 items. However Origin is a very unique work, an idea album of full of life, advanced compositions that had been principally written in New York Metropolis throughout the pandemic.

“I really feel like being a composer has made me a greater participant,” he says. “That’s one thing I all the time take into consideration. I made a decision that possibly I ought to simply put the concentrate on myself as a composer. I needed my viewers to additionally concentrate on me as a younger composer. This album, Origin, has to do with what I used to be experiencing. It occurred throughout the pandemic. It was a second in time when there was uncertainty of what lies forward. It was me trying, not on the future, however trying to the times we’re in and the way I can use music and possibly the expertise of being within the pandemic as a supply of inspiration. Not as a battle however extra of an inspirational second for me to create music, the reward that God has given me to share with folks.”

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Not in contrast to many younger composers, the Bali-born musician’s introduction to jazz got here from his father’s report assortment. In line with a New York Occasions profile, Alexander started enjoying on the age of six and will pick a Thelonious Monk piece by ear. Inside a couple of years, he was being taken to jam periods in Bali and Jakarta. Whereas in Jakarta, he carried out for Herbie Hancock. Ultimately, a YouTube clip made its technique to Marsalis.

“My father was my publicity (to jazz), simply by listening and going to see reside reveals despite the fact that, the place I used to be born, in Bali, there was not a giant scene,” he says. “However there have been locations that had jazz and my mother and father would take me to see musicians. I didn’t go to all of the jam periods, however after I did I might simply sit in and play. I needed to get into the expertise of being there and the vitality of the opposite musicians enjoying with me; the liberty and the dialog, despite the fact that I used to be nonetheless studying in regards to the music and I nonetheless am; how we work together and the way we perceive one another’s tendencies. In jazz, listening is so vital and essential. That’s what I like about enjoying jazz.”

The Joey Alexander Trio performs The Jack Singer Live performance Corridor on April 28 at 7:30 p.m. as a part of the Arts Commons Jazz Collection.