Celebrated jazz pianist Monty Alexander is performing for his 80th birthday year on Saturday, Nov. 16 at Segerstrom Center’s intimate Samueli Theater Jazz Club.
Seated at the theater’s candle-lit tables, patrons can enjoy Alexander’s rhythmic playing—his style routinely described as “joyous” and “effusive”—accompanied by Luke Sellick on bass and Jason Brown on drums. The trio will perform two sets Saturday evening, at 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
Alexander has stated that his goal in performing is “to build up the heat and kick up a storm” with his melodic music.
“Monty’s playing has this kind of sparkle,” fellow pianist Kenny Barron notes. “It’s definitely music to make you feel good, and it’s geared toward that. His music is always joyful.”
A Jamaican native, Alexander was born on June 6, 1944 (also D-Day) in Kingston and began playing piano by ear at four years old, taking formal lessons at six. He arrived in Miami, Florida at 17, having played in Kingston’s clubs and steeped in the dance music of his hometown.
“It was music with a beat, and depending how you attack the rhythm, how fierce the rhythm would get, people would want to dance and clap their hands,” he remembers. “The music came up with that certain identifiably Jamaican accent or rhythm, the way people talk, walk, or drive.”
Fusing that rhythmic sensibility with American dance and jazz sounds of the 1950s and ‘60s, Alexander was soon assisted by none other than Frank Sinatra to musically accompanying be-bop and jazz artists in New York.
He became friends with musicians Miles Davis, Quincy Davis, Milt Jackson and Oscar Peterson. “They shook the world when they played,” Alexander said of those legends who further inspired him. He recorded his first album at age 20, titled Alexander the Great.
Over his prolific 60-year career since, Alexander has performed or recorded with artists such as Sinatra, Natalie Cole, Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones and Tony Bennett. Featured on more than 75 recordings, Monty is listed as the fifth greatest jazz pianist in Gene Rizzo’s 2005 book, The Fifty Greatest Jazz Piano Players of All Time.
Alexander’s reach has extended globally as well, having toured internationally, especially in Europe from the 1960s through ‘80s—filling the space between jazz, rhythm-and-blues and Caribbean calypso, reggae and ska.
His 2019 album, Wareika Hill: RastaMonk Vibrations, interprets the music of American jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk through a rollicking island vibe—infused with “coconuts and bananas, and mangoes too,” as Alexander describes in a video.
His 2022 album, Monty Alexander: The Montreux Years (Live), pays homage in part to Jamaican musicians, featuring a jazz cover of Bob Marley’s 1974 reggae song, “No Woman, No Cry.”
The Jamaican government conferred on Alexander the Order of Jamaica in 2022 for “sterling contributions to the promotions of Jamaican music and the jazz genre interpretations globally.”
Alexander credits staying honest with himself for continuing to play music that makes people happy. “That original flame is a noble passion,” he told Strand magazine in 2022, adding that music is a gift that can uplift people.
“It’s a privilege that the audience is there,” he said. “If I have a trio, I think of the audience as the fourth member.”
Monty Alexander will perform on Saturday, Nov. 16 in the Samueli Theater Jazz Club at Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 615 Town Center Dr., Costa Mesa, as part of its jazz club series. For tickets and information, call the box office at (714) 556-2787 or visit SCFTA.org. Preview some of Alexander’s music on Spotify, here.
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