Event
Eric Alexander Quartet - Straight-Ahead Tenor Sax Dynamo
"Eric Alexander is a wonder; a young man with a horn whose impassioned tenor sax is the resonant vehicle for one of contemporary jazz's most exciting and original voices." Chuck Berg, JazzTimes
"Alexander, who possesses a warm, muscular tone, has become one of the top tenor players in modern jazz. . . . He comes straight at you, a mix of Rollins and Coleman, with a splash of Coltrane tossed in for good measure, but he clearly has established his own sound." - Edward Zucker, All About Jazz
With his warm, distinctive sound, beautiful and unyielding as polished ebony, tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander has, indeed, quickly taken his place as one of the most exciting saxmen working today. Since making his recording debut in 1991, Alexander has recorded a shelf-full of acclaimed CDs. A mainstay of the New York jazz scene, Alexander appears regularly at the hip, uptown nightclub, Smoke.
Early on, Alexander mentored with jazz greats like George Coleman and Von Freeman, and the great piano legend Harold Maeburn is still Alexander's most frequent collaborator. And while Alexander's virtuostic dexterity and interpretive acuity have grown immensely over his still young career, he has never strayed from the classic power of straight-ahead jazz peformance.
Alexander has been exploring new musical worlds from the outset. He started out on piano as a six-year-old, took up clarinet at nine, switched to alto sax when he was 12, and converted to tenor when jazz became his obsession during his one year at the University of Indiana, Bloomington (1986-87). At William Paterson College in New Jersey he advanced his studies under the tutelage of Mabern, Joe Lovano, Rufus Reid, and others.
"The people I listened to in college are still the cats that are influencing me today," says Alexander. "Monk, Dizzy, Sonny Stitt, Clifford Brown, Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, Joe Henderson-the legacy left by Bird and all the bebop pioneers, that language and that feel, that's the bread and butter of everything I do. George Coleman remains a big influence because of his very hip harmonic approach, and I'm still listening all the time to Coltrane because I feel that even in the wildest moments of his mid- to late-Sixties solos I can find these little kernels of melodic information and find ways to employ them in my own playing."
During the 1990's, after placing second behind Joshua Redman in the 1991 Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition, Alexander threw himself into the whirlwind life of a professional jazz musician. He played with organ trios on the South Side of Chicago, made his recording debut in 1991 with Charles Earland, and cut his first album as leader in 1992 (Straight Up for Delmark). More recordings for Delmark, Criss Cross, and Alfa, followed, leading to 1997's Man with a Horn, the 1998 collaborative quartet session with George Mraz, John Hicks, and Idris Muhammad, Solid! and, that same year, the first recording by One for All, Alexander
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LocationJazz at Pearl's
256 Columbus Ave
San Francisco, CA 94133
United States
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