![]() “Some people say: ‘I really love your music, I haven’t really listened to jazz yet, now I’m starting.’ ![]() Playing music and being on the road is like a school for me Joey Alexander He has no interest in fame – when I tell him he has 100,000 fans on Facebook it seems like the first time he’s heard that – but seems most excited about growing interest in jazz as a genre. ![]() At times he seems to be in awe of his own ability. He and his family are Christian, and Alexander repeatedly refers to his talent as a “gift”. “That’s how I really started my career as a musician, I think. At nine he won the inaugural “Master-Jam” jazz festival, and when he was 10 one of his YouTube videos was spotted by Wynton Marsalis, the nine-time Grammy winner and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, who invited him to play in New York. The family realised Alexander’s talent, and by the time he was eight they had uprooted to Jakarta so he could accelerate his learning closer to Indonesia’s jazz scene. His dad, Denny, was an amateur musician, and soon started taking his young son to jam sessions in Bali. Soul Dreamer, the last track on Countdown, was the first song he wrote, when he was 10 years old.Īlexander had taught himself to play the piano – using a mini electric keyboard – four years earlier. “And my dad will record it so I can remember it.”Īfter his dad records his explorations Alexander listens back and refines his work, spending about a month on each song. “I just explore chords and melodies and then suddenly these ideas come out to me,” Alexander says. He declines coffee or tea, although his agent promises him a post-interview tiramisu, and starts to tell me about his songwriting process. He looks like he could be in a very young boyband. He’s wearing a navy blue peacoat, skinny jeans and black sneakers, and has a Beatles-style haircut looming above thick framed glasses. The three of them moved here from their home country of Indonesia two years ago, and have settled in SoHo, a trendy Manhattan neighbourhood.Īlexander looks the part. This echoes the advice jazz master John Scofield said he received at the start of his career from Miles Davis: that musicians need to learn to “play with space”.We’ve arranged to meet in a steak restaurant in New York City, where Alexander has been living with his parents for the past two years. Still, over the course of the evening, the songs which worked best were often those where Alexander was more spare, almost minimalist, in contrast to the flurries of notes of other works. And Davis showed his usual dexterity, moving effortlessly from traditional jazz syncopation to more Afro-Cuban styles.Īlexander has always been a master of swing technique, with an ability to combine and transition among harmonies which has led others to compare him to Dave Brubeck and Oscar Peterson. There were songs where Funn held the melody and Alexander’s piano and keyboards worked in the background. Īlexander was ably supported throughout the set by a tight trio, of Kris Funn on bass and John Davis on drums. The one non-original work was a surprise: Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me”. And last night, at The Dakota, he followed that trend by playing almost entirely original works - some from Origin, and others from earlier albums, Warna (2020) and Eclipse (2018). His sixth (!) album, Origin (which dropped last year with Mack Avenue Records), was his first made up entirely of original works. The question becomes, how do they follow up their attention-grabbing first act?įor Alexander, one thing that has definitely changed as he adjusts to being a “former prodigy” is that he has moved away from playing standards to writing and playing original compositions. They become simply another young adult who is very, very good at something, being compared to other comparably accomplished performers in the same field. ![]() The thing about prodigies, though - whether prodigies at music or mathematics or chess - is that at some point they “age out” of that category. (He would later accumulate two more nominations.) As a certified prodigy, Alexander garnered profiles in the New York Times and on 60 Minutes. Joey Alexander became an international sensation at 11 years old, playing jazz standards on piano like a seasoned veteran. At 12, performing at the 2016 Grammy’s, he was the youngest ever Grammy nominee. The faces of the Joey Alexander Trio, who performed Friday at The Dakota in Minneapolis.
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