Jazz Articles about Eric Alexander

About Eric Alexander

Album Review

Mike LeDonne: It's All Your Fault

Read "It's All Your Fault" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
July 13, 2021

Even though listed on only four tracks, organist Mike LeDonne's superlative Groover Quartet performs on every one of the nine selections on LeDonne's admirable new recording, It's All Your Fault--and that's a good thing, as each member of the quartet (LeDonne, tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, guitarist Peter Bernstein, drummer Joe Farnsworth) is an accomplished soloist and ardent team player. On the album's remaining tracks, the quartet is assimilated into LeDonne's seventeen- member big band, a taut and high-powered unit that ...

Album Review

Cory Weeds: O Sole Mio! Music From The Motherland

Read "O Sole Mio! Music From The Motherland" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 22, 2021

O Sole Mio!, the latest in a series of splendid albums by Canadian-bred saxophonist/entrepreneur Cory Weeds, is subtitled “Music from the Motherland"-- in other words, Italy, which, presumably, is Woods' ancestral home. Whatever the case, Woods' blue-chip quintet focuses for the most part on music born in Italy or written by Italian-Americans including Henry Mancini, Nino Rota, Pat Martino, Chick Corea and Dodo Marmarosa. To allay any doubt that all would go well, Weeds invited the superlative tenor saxophonist Eric ...

Album Review

Cory Weeds: O Sole Mio! Music From The Motherland

Read "O Sole Mio! Music From The Motherland" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
February 8, 2021

Even in these trying and uncertain times, there are some professional creative artists who recognize the need to “carry on" and make the best of a bad situation. Saxophonist Cory Weeds is one of those individuals. He is releasing O Sole Mio! Music From The Motherland on his own label, CellarMusic. Weeds has merged his talents as an alto saxophonist with Mike LeDonne's Groover Quartet featuring LeDonne on Hammond B3 organ, Eric Alexander on tenor saxophone, Peter Bernstein on guitar ...

Album Review

John DiMartino: Passion Flower: The Music of Billy Strayhorn

Read "Passion Flower: The Music of Billy Strayhorn" reviewed by Dr. Judith Schlesinger

by Dr. Judith Schlesinger
May 25, 2020

Pianist/composer/arranger/producer John DiMartino is a first-call veteran of the New York City jazz scene. This multi-recorded artist has long been a favorite of singers for his gigantic ears and intuitive, uncluttered playing—rare gifts which also enhance any instrumentalist he accompanies or arranges. All of these talents inform DiMartino's splendid Billy Strayhorn tribute, Passion Flower, where he is joined by his ever-superb colleagues: Eric Alexander on tenor saxophone, drummer Lewis Nash and bassist Boris Kozlov. The wonderful vocalist Raul Midon sings ...

Album Review

John di Martino: Passion Flower: The Music of Billy Strayhorn

Read "Passion Flower: The Music of Billy Strayhorn" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 30, 2020

Composer / arranger Billy Strayhorn was barely twenty-three years old when he first met bandleader Duke Ellington, an encounter that would lead to a collaboration that lasted more than half of Strayhorn's life. During that time, Strayhorn wrote some of the Ellington orchestra's most acclaimed and enduring songs including “Lotus Blossom," “Chelsea Bridge," “Isfahan" and, most notably, the jazz classic “Take the 'A' Train," as well as others for which Ellington claimed partial credit ("Daydream," “Something to Live For") and ...

Album Review

John Di Martino: Passion Flower: The Music of Billy Strayhorn

Read "Passion Flower: The Music of Billy Strayhorn" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
April 17, 2020

When esophageal cancer took Billy Strayhorn's life in 1967, his work and legacy rested squarely in the shadow of Duke Ellington's world. More than half a century later, though the two figures remain inextricably linked, Strayhorn's genius has moved past the penumbra of his legendary collaborator and employer, occupying its own clear place in the jazz firmament. Through biography and documentary film, his own lush life has been illuminated. And of equal importance, Strayhorn's compositions continue to bloom in others' ...

Album Review

Harold Mabern: Mabern Plays Mabern

Read "Mabern Plays Mabern" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
March 18, 2020

A tad more subdued than the barn-burning The Iron Man: Live At Smoke (Smoke Sessions Records, 2019), Mabern Plays Mabern still manages to jump full throttle from where that defining recording left us, with a lush, lyrical intensity and a vital, legacy-culling energy which plays as an exquisite coda to the pianist's long, outstanding career. Alive with the same stylist's intuition and unbridled spirit which found him cutting through the ranks with such contemporaries as Charles Lloyd and ...