Joey Alexander

[mrjazzman]

Saw JA at Yoshi's Oakland. Another child prodigy who's not quite there yet. Don't see what a 2nd electric piano added to the music. Although still only 21, his handlers need to work on his stage presence, especially his English. Still with these young folks, I hear a lot of cerebral, original compositions that sound like elevator music. His arrangement of My Funny Valentine was so removed from the melody, it took me about 3 choroses before I recognized it. Technically brilliant young Jazz pianist with imense talent. I need to hear more blues/hard bop swing to his compositions

[felser]

Great description.  The cerebral elevator-music originals has been an issue with many musicians in these technically gifted generations since the 80's.

[JSngry]

Find me an elevator with that type of .music. Or any type of music for that matter!

[Ken Dryden]

I am puzzled by so young musicians who emphasize their originals on a CD or live set when they clearly haven’t developed into clearly gifted composers with something to say. Even veteran bandleaders who are/were prolific composers have tended to include standards and established jazz works in their concerts. It is a challenge for many musicians to play eight to ten originals which hold one’s interest. Of course, there will be exceptions.

[mjzee]

3 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:

I am puzzled by so young musicians who emphasize their originals on a CD or live set when they clearly haven’t developed into clearly gifted composers with something to say. Even veteran bandleaders who are/were prolific composers have tended to include standards and established jazz works in their concerts. It is a challenge for many musicians to play eight to ten originals which hold one’s interest. Of course, there will be exceptions.

I couldn’t agree more.

[JSngry]

I guess we all got spoiled by Horace Silver and Wayne Shorter and people of their ilk.

Or by having jazz radio for that matter, where a DJ could interact with a community in real time.

Or maybe this child prodigy hype is for marketing and never about music.

[Ken Dryden]

I remember how so many of the young stars hyped by major labels in the late 1980s & early 1990s simply seemed to vanish after a few CDs: Christopher Hollyday, in particular. 

We're spoiled by those who produced a lot of memorable originals in their early years in the 1950s and 1960s. But musicians who are produced by jazz education rather than getting experience playing with a veteran leader who will let them know when their writing and playing needs work have a tougher time of it if they haven't paid their dues and honed their craft.

I still remember the phone call our PD got about the awful Amani A.W. Murray debut CD from the late Duke Dubois at GRP. It was something like, "I'm not pushing this one. The kid came in and blew one take after another, Clark Terry and Roland Hanna started getting mad and we ended up having to splice it all together. I told him, 'If you're going to make it in this business, you're going to have to practice!'" Murray vanished after that embarrassing release.

 

[Guy Berger]

13 minutes ago, Ken Dryden said:

I remember how so many of the young stars hyped by major labels in the late 1980s & early 1990s simply seemed to vanish after a few CDs: Christopher Hollyday, in particular. 

We're spoiled by those who produced a lot of memorable originals in their early years in the 1950s and 1960s. But musicians who are produced by jazz education rather than getting experience playing with a veteran leader who will let them know when their writing and playing needs work have a tougher time of it if they haven't paid their dues and honed their craft.

I still remember the phone call our PD got about the awful Amani A.W. Murray debut CD from the late Duke Dubois at GRP. It was something like, "I'm not pushing this one. The kid came in and blew one take after another, Clark Terry and Roland Hanna started getting mad and we ended up having to splice it all together. I told him, 'If you're going to make it in this business, you're going to have to practice!'" Murray vanished after that embarrassing release.

I assume a lot of it is just that a career as a professional musician is not a great way to support a family or a comfortable lifestyle.  Economic opportunities outside of music are generally better than they were in the 1950s and 1960s.  So a lot of creators withdraw from the scene.

[mjzee]

I much prefer if musicians record standards, or at least recognizable tunes, but they don't make any royalties off tunes written by someone else.  They're fighting for every penny.  I understand that, even if I usually don't want to listen to it.

[JSngry]

When both life and music suck, we're living in the last days.

Proceed acc9ordingly, and don't say you weren't warned.

2 minutes ago, mjzee said:

I much prefer if musicians record standards, or at least recognizable tunes, but they don't make any royalties off tunes written by someone else.  They're fighting for every penny.  I understand that, even if I usually don't want to listen to it.

 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

1 hour ago, Ken Dryden said:

I remember how so many of the young stars hyped by major labels in the late 1980s & early 1990s simply seemed to vanish after a few CDs: Christopher Hollyday, in particular.

I haven't seen Hollyday in a few years but he's still out there. I think I last saw him pre-Covid. He didn't vanish but did bail on the music industry for a few decades because he decided to be a teacher. It sounds like he started going back into the studio in 2018. From his website:

In 1993 Hollyday pursued his desire to teach and study composition and arranging at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. It was here that he began studying the clarinet.

In 1996, Hollyday relocated to San Diego where he taught high school instrumental music for 13 years. Hollyday completed a masters degree in jazz studies at San Diego State University where began studying flute.

He now teaches saxophone at San Diego State University and woodwinds privately from his studio in San Diego.

[bertrand]

7 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:

I am puzzled by so young musicians who emphasize their originals on a CD or live set when they clearly haven’t developed into clearly gifted composers with something to say. Even veteran bandleaders who are/were prolific composers have tended to include standards and established jazz works in their concerts. It is a challenge for many musicians to play eight to ten originals which hold one’s interest. Of course, there will be exceptions.

This is a huge topic of discussion. Artists are encouraged to highlight their originals and the media does its part to help, but as Jim suggested, not everyone is a Horace or Wayne.

The argument 'not ready yet' is a valid one, but the guys from the 60s were hardly veterans when they wrote songs that became classics overnight. What is the difference? I have been struggling for years to figure it out.

[JSngry]

19 minutes ago, bertrand said:

The argument 'not ready yet' is a valid one, but the guys from the 60s were hardly veterans when they wrote songs that became classics overnight. What is the difference? I have been struggling for years to figure it out.

Those guys gigged. Pretty much everybody could get some kind of gig. And pretty much everybody did the work in the woodshed AND on the bandstand. A broader set of experiences will give you a broader perspective on life, and therefore on music. Even if your were in a relatively small subset of the population, playing with people in the same room as other people with whom you are not playing is just a fundamentally different type of life experience.

I don't think this is particularly complicated, but I guess the fact that being a "young jazz musician" today mostly means being a different type of human than it used to upsets a lot of people and their economies.

[Rabshakeh]

Joey Alexander is big on YouTube, along with others, like Hiromi Uehara. That's what that community likes. You could hardly call either of them overhyped, given that they're not really mentioned by critics, but something about them has caught the eye of the Reddit community. 

44 minutes ago, bertrand said:

The argument 'not ready yet' is a valid one, but the guys from the 60s were hardly veterans when they wrote songs that became classics overnight. What is the difference? I have been struggling for years to figure it out.

To add to @JSngry's earlier point, there was also a larger pool of talent that was connected directly to the previous hard bop era pool of talent in historical terms, and they had a larger commercial audience. Musicians like Alexander are just kids who do well at music at school and then get to record. There aren't many of them and they're selected to please teacher, not other musicians or the buying public (commercially this stuff is a non-event in 2025).  It isn't the same thing as having a natural well of hundreds of talented players from regional towns already semi-developed, and used to playing for audiences ranging from university jazz clubs, old ladies in churches, to kids hanging around jukeboxes.

[JSngry]

1 minute ago, Rabshakeh said:

Joey Alexander is big on YouTube, along with others, like Hiromi Uehara. That's what that community likes. You could hardly call either of them overhyped, given that they're not really mentioned by critics, but something about them has caught the eye of the Reddit community. 

I don't pay attention to :critics" anymore, but I keep hearing about them anyway, mostly thru advertisements for records or gigs. That's definitely "hype".

And I mean, I just don't care. Their world is not my world, and I'm sure that we're both ok with that.

But - I think my vision of the world heading towards total real hell with increasingly alarming acceleration is more "real" than theirs' of nirvanic wonder and awe.

Now, for my granddaughter's sake I hope and pray that they're right. But as they say, hope is not a strategy,

8 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

Joey Alexander is big on YouTube, along with others, like Hiromi Uehara. That's what that community likes. You could hardly call either of them overhyped, given that they're not really mentioned by critics, but something about them has caught the eye of the Reddit community. 

To add to @JSngry's earlier point, there was also a larger pool of talent that was connected directly to the previous hard bop era pool of talent in historical terms, and they had a larger commercial audience. Musicians like Alexander are just kids who do well at music at school and then get to record. There aren't many of them and they're selected to please teacher, not other musicians or the buying public (commercially this stuff is a non-event in 2025).  It isn't the same thing as having a natural well of hundreds of talented players from regional towns already semi-developed, and used to playing for audiences ranging from university jazz clubs, old ladies in churches, to kids hanging around jukeboxes.

Wayne could write "Lester Left Town" and Mingus "Goodbye Porkpie Hat" because they knew Lester. Literally knew him, ran into him on the street, heard him play in clubs, talked with him, drank with him, all of that.

I hope that somebody who did the same with Wayne will do the same, but I don't know that something like "Wayne's On The Astral Plane Now" is going to work as nightclub music (Wayne's own phrase, remember). I would like to hear the music of somebody who watched movies with Wayne deal with that information, supposedly that was a BIG part of Wayne's life esthetic.

And people like Wayne and Herbie, people who were well-versed in "modern classical music", yes, you can/should definitely do that, but to balance that with nightclub music...there's gotta be real nightclubs, ranging from swank joints to JOINT joints, but not playing joints at all...that's an essential ingredient being removed from the recipe for which no equivalent substitute has been found, at least not for my palate.

Ultimately though, what I'm missing is stuff that is gone and ain't coming back.

[Guy Berger]

1 hour ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I haven't seen Hollyday in a few years but he's still out there. I think I last saw him pre-Covid. He didn't vanish but did bail on the music industry for a few decades because he decided to be a teacher. It sounds like he started going back into the studio in 2018. From his website:

In 1993 Hollyday pursued his desire to teach and study composition and arranging at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. It was here that he began studying the clarinet.

In 1996, Hollyday relocated to San Diego where he taught high school instrumental music for 13 years. Hollyday completed a masters degree in jazz studies at San Diego State University where began studying flute.

He now teaches saxophone at San Diego State University and woodwinds privately from his studio in San Diego.

Good for him.

[Niko]

Jazz drew greater talents in those legendary years (or, rather, in the decades before) and there were possibly more unexplored avenues...

That said, I heard Alexander live a few years back and thought it was an enjoyable evening.... I also heard Lovano and fell asleep mid-set, no judgement beyond that... (And I saw Julian Lage with his trio and thought it was possibly the best live act I've ever seen)

[Ken Dryden]

The reason I brought up Christopher Hollyday is that as he recorded, he focused more and more on his originals with each new CD. He seemed to run out of gas by his fourth Novus CD. I emceed a show he did around 1989 when his pianist was a young Brad Mehldau and every number was uptempo, there was no attempt to pace the set. I’ve got his recent CDs and he has matured as a player and composer.

Of course, both Gerry Mulligan and Bob Brookmeyer were accomplished composers and arrangers writing for bands in their youth, but it was not like they were thrust into leading a band for a major label or a subsidiary in their late teens.

[tranemonk]

5 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:

I remember how so many of the young stars hyped by major labels in the late 1980s & early 1990s simply seemed to vanish after a few CDs: Christopher Hollyday, in particular. 

We're spoiled by those who produced a lot of memorable originals in their early years in the 1950s and 1960s. But musicians who are produced by jazz education rather than getting experience playing with a veteran leader who will let them know when their writing and playing needs work have a tougher time of it if they haven't paid their dues and honed their craft.

I still remember the phone call our PD got about the awful Amani A.W. Murray debut CD from the late Duke Dubois at GRP. It was something like, "I'm not pushing this one. The kid came in and blew one take after another, Clark Terry and Roland Hanna started getting mad and we ended up having to splice it all together. I told him, 'If you're going to make it in this business, you're going to have to practice!'" Murray vanished after that embarrassing release.

 

Christopher Hollyday doesn't even ring a bell. I tend to think several of the "young lions" from the 90s have hung around and are successful. Benny Green, Carl Allen, Joshua Redman, and Branford Marsalis all come to mind. Who else are you thinking of who was hyped and then disappeared?

[JSngry]

[Ken Dryden]

2 hours ago, tranemonk said:

Christopher Hollyday doesn't even ring a bell. I tend to think several of the "young lions" from the 90s have hung around and are successful. Benny Green, Carl Allen, Joshua Redman, and Branford Marsalis all come to mind. Who else are you thinking of who was hyped and then disappeared?

After several self-released titles in his teens, he was signed by Novus and issued four CDs, then vanished from recordings until a few years ago. 

I wonder what ever happened to Derrick Shezbie?

Another young player who vanished after a few CDs was pianist Sergio Salvatore.

[kh1958]

1 hour ago, Ken Dryden said:

 

I wonder what ever happened to Derrick Shezbie?

 

https://www.louisianamusicfactory.com/product/derrick-shezbie-the-ghost-of-buddy-bolden/

[Rabshakeh]

Is there maybe a difference between the hype that these Young Lions received and the focus on the likes of Joey Alexander?

The Young Lions were a record label push and, if the musicians didn't catch, they were quickly dropped and ended up obscure.

Whereas Joey Alexander continues to be genuinely popular (in jazz terms). If you go on Reddit and ask the jazz fans there to recommend you good recent jazz the likes of Joey Alexander will be mentioned immediately, along with Hiromi and Bill Charlap (the three practicing jazz acoustic musicians whom Reddit seems to love the most).

Joey Alexander isn't going to lapse into obscurity. Nor is he "young" at this stage by any measure. He is seven albums in and ten years into his recording career. The failing Young Lions of the late 80s and early 90s never got that kind of grace.

I think if you're looking for overhyped youngsters today you should be looking away from acoustic jazz, which has effectively been deserted by the critics. 

The critical and modern jazz orthodoxy has long since shifted towards mixed genre crossover and "spiritual jazz", fronted by younger musicians who look the part. The last seven or so years has seen a flood of new entrants, now clearly ebbing fast. Many of the new entrants seem to have already effectively tapped out. 

[Dub Modal]

Thanks to the OP and subsequent convo I checked out his most recent studio work "Continuous" with Kris Funn (b), John Davis (d) and Theo Croker (tp). Very enjoyable. I don't hear much influence from the bebop era but I do hear 70s Tyner and Chick Corea. He plays a lot of notes but I hear purpose behind them. Overall the album reminds me of Mathias Eick's records. Similar vibes. I'll definitely revisit it and would go see him live as well. 

Just a quick word on the drumming style here. Definitely modern and something that's ubiquitous these days. Sometimes I can't help but think it's like sanitized Elvin Jones to a degree, but with elements of marching band percussion that maybe goes all the way back to Sousa. So there's at least some musical heritage involved. But it also comes across as cleaned up for groove-oriented ears which makes sense I guess since they do want record sales. I'm not familiar with John Davis that I know of but it's not his fault and he plays well here. It doesn't distract here though and serves the music well enough. 

Edited yesterday at 12:39 PM by Dub Modal

[Peter Friedman]

My good friend  jazz pianist the late George Ziskind and I spoke about this often. He referred to what he called "the composer gene" that only a limited number of musicians have.

When I look at a jazz album and see all the tunes are originals by the leader, I quickly loose interest in hearing it. Of course there are a number of exceptions such as ,for example Horace, Cedar, Wayne, Bird, Golson and some others. Some standards, and or some of the fine tunes by the jazz musicians with the "composer gene" provides an incentive for me to want to give that album a listen.