Alexander's new album is the third
release from Jimmy Katz's Giant Step Arts, a groundbreaking, artist-focused
non-profit with a single mission: to help modern jazz innovators create their
art free of commercial pressure
"[Eric Alexander] is invariably eloquent and
persuasive, reinforcing his stature as one of the jazz world's most astute and
accomplished tenor saxophonists." - Jack Bowers, All About Jazz
"A lot of magic and beauty can come out of the freedom
to explore that Jimmy [Katz and Giant Step Arts] granted us. I think the reason
the music sounds the way that it does is because there was so much trust and
freedom." - Johnathan Blake, drummer and Giant Step Arts recording artist
A modern-day master of the tenor saxophone, Eric Alexander
is revered in hard bop and post-bop circles for his muscular tone,
sophisticated expression, and exhilarating melodic invention. On his latest
album, Leap of Faith, Alexander takes an unexpected plunge into the unknown
with a set of far-reaching excursions with a brilliant chordless trio featuring
bassist Doug Weiss and drummer Johnathan Blake. Recorded live at New York
City's Jazz Gallery, the stunning, surprising new album will be released May
17, 2019 thanks to the groundbreaking new non-profit Giant Step Arts, led by
noted photographer and recording engineer Jimmy Katz.
It was at Katz's suggestion that Alexander decided to take
this leap in the first place. The two men have known one another for more than
25 years, crossing paths shortly after the Illinois native arrived in New York
City in the early 90s. Hearing the passion and imagination in Alexander's
playing, Katz would often suggest that the saxophonist explore a more expansive
setting than his usual bop métier afforded. Being an artist with a particular
vision (and a dose of the accompanying stubbornness), Alexander's instinctual
response was to reject any suggestion of where he should take his own music.
"I know what I feel and what I'm enthusiastic about as
a musician, so I have a built-in knee-jerk reaction to people telling me I
should do something different," Alexander explains. "You have to
trust what you're doing, or it can be very hard to be genuine. Once the idea
began to set in, though, I realized it could be really exciting and rewarding
on many levels. I started trying to figure out what type of material would
satisfy the mission of the project and also make me feel like I was being
honest, and I came up with something that was a little more than slightly
different from what I've done before."
Creating the environment to do just that - embark on daring
new endeavors, freed from the usual demands of record label and sales chart
expectations - is precisely why Katz founded the innovative Giant Step Arts.
Katz launched the organization in January 2018 in order to provide some of the
music's most innovative artists with the artistic and financial opportunity to
create bold, adventurous new music free of commercial pressure.
For the artists it chooses to work with, by invitation only,
the nonprofit:
- presents premiere performances and compensates the artists
well
- records these performances for independent release
- provides the artists with 800 CDs and digital downloads to
sell directly. Artists will own their own masters.
- provides the artists with photos and videos for promotional
use
- provides PR support for the artists recordings
"Giant Step Arts will not be selling any music,"
Katz says. "We have two goals: help the musicians and raise more money so
we can help more musicians."
That model, Alexander says, is for him as radical a
departure from the norm as the music on Leap of Faith. "It's diametrically
opposite in every single sense of that term from everything else that I've
done. It feels like a test for a very different model and I'm anxious to see
what's going to happen. It's a leap of faith, appropriately enough."
While Leap of Faith falls squarely into a tradition of
unbridled tenor exploration that dates back to some of Alexander's major
heroes, notably Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, it represents a first for
Alexander in a few ways. He has rarely played in, and almost never recorded in,
a chordless trio setting. It also marks the first time, in a discography that
counts more than 40 releases, that Alexander has recorded an album consisting
solely of his own original tunes.
Aside from Katz's persistent urging, Alexander was also
inspired to undertake this bold new endeavor by a turbulent period in his life
that included the death of his father, who is paid heartfelt tribute on the
tender and searching ballad "Big Richard." That was the most potent
of the several "mid-life bumps in the road" that Alexander found
himself facing upon turning 50 in 2018. "That may have put me, emotionally
and creatively speaking, in a bit more of a raw space," he concludes.
"I thought I could use this project to vent, that maybe it would be
cathartic to just let things fly."
Inaugurated by Alexander's roving melodic tendrils, the trio
begins the album with a brief free investigation that snaps into the bristling,
brawny "Luquitas," built upon and opened up from an earlier Alexander
original dedicated his second-born son, "Little Lucas." The piece is
an out-of-the-gate showcase for the trio's boundless energy, surging forward
with unceasing momentum for more than eight minutes. It's followed by
"Mars," which borrows the harmonic progression of a surprising
source: the Bruno Mars megahit "Finesse."
"My kids liked it," Alexander explains. "If
your kids actually want to share something with you, it's good to stop and
listen for a second. I really liked it, then I took that ball and ran with
it."
Meditative piano chords open "Corazon Perdido,"
which breaks the chordless pattern by having Alexander accompany himself for a
few ruminative minutes. It's followed by some of the saxophonist's most
electrifying blowing, on the swaggering "Hard Blues." Blake's
powerful rumble provides the bed for the blistering, volatile
"Frenzy," while Weiss' deep, moaning bowed bass becomes the
undercurrent of "Magyar," based on a reduction of themes from Béla
Bartók's "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta." Coltrane's
influence rears its fiery head on the far-reaching finale, "Second
Impression."
For those who've heard Alexander stretch out live, some of
the more explosive playing on Leap of Faith may not be quite so shocking.
Alexander says it's also not such a departure given his own wide-ranging
tastes, which have not always emerged so strongly in his music. "Despite
the fact that people believe that they have a pretty good idea of what my
'brand' is, I'm not really a bebop purist. I've always incorporated bits and
pieces of what people might consider the avant-garde into what I do, so this
was just a matter of letting that take over. That was really the giant step for
me, and it felt at times like an out of body experience."
Boasting a warm, finely burnished tone and a robust melodic
and harmonic imagination, tenor saxophonist Eric 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. At William Paterson College in New Jersey he advanced his
studies under the tutelage of Harold Mabern, Joe Lovano, Rufus Reid, and
others. Eric has appeared in many capacities on record, including leader,
sideman, and producer, as well as composing a number of the tunes he records.
By now, Alexander has lost count of how many albums feature his playing; he
guesses 80 or 90. While he has garnered critical acclaim from every corner,
what has mattered most has been to establish his own voice within the
illustrious bop-based jazz tradition.
Through his award-winning photography with wife Dena Katz,
and his esteemed work as a recording engineer, Katz has spent nearly 30 years
helping to shape the way that audiences see and hear jazz musicians. Katz has
been hired to participate in over 540 recording projects, many historic, and
has photographed nearly 200 magazine covers. Whether taken in the studio, in
the clubs, on the streets or in the musicians' homes, his photographs offer
intimate portraits of the artists at work and in repose and capture the
collaborative and improvisatory process of jazz itself. Recipient of the Jazz
Journalists Association award for jazz photography in both 2006 and 2011,
Katz's work has been exhibited in Germany, Italy and Japan. Among the
world-renowned artists he's photographed are Sonny Rollins, Keith Jarrett,
Ornette Coleman, Freddie Hubbard, Roy Haynes, Cassandra Wilson, Ray Charles,
Dave Brubeck, Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, John Zorn, Pat
Metheny, and Dizzy Gillespie. In addition to his well-known visual art, Katz is
an esteemed recording engineer who has worked with artists including David S.
Ware, Joe Lovano, Harold Mabern, William Parker, Benny Golson, and Chris
Potter, among others.
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