Grammy-nominated jazz pianist Monty Alexander to play in Mumbai today

In a career spanning more than five decades, the Grammy-nominated musician won the Independent Music Award for Best Live Performance Album for Harlem-Kingston Express. A regular jazz festival across the globe, Alexander, on his first visit to India, is set to perform at the NCPA International Jazz Festival 2022 on November 26, in Mumbai.

The festival also saw performances by the New York-based 14-ensemble, The Mingus Big Band, which specialises in the compositions of American jazz upright bassist, pianist and composer Charles Mingus Jr while Germany-based Thilo Wolf Jazz Quartet will perform with singer Johanna Iser on November 27 at the festival.

Ahead of his visit, Alexander is excited by India, a country that reminds him of “curry, mango chutney, Bollywood, cricket and the brilliant people that came to America and contributed to the field of science and technology.” But his admiration for India doesn’t stop there. Alexander reveals the similarities he sees between Indian classical music, jazz and African music. “I hear the Indian influence in the rhythms of the popular music of Jamaica in a very powerful way. It’s how things blend together. One of the biggest things for me when I play music is to go right for the rhythm – the heartbeat of life,” he says.

Talking about his latest album, Love Notes, in which he also makes his vocal debut, Alexander says that it was the music of his childhood in Jamaica and its nostalgia that influenced his latest work. “My influences were Caribbean music and folk music. But it was also jazz and American standards,” says Alexander who has always held Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole as his musical heroes. At 10, he saw the latter at a concert in Jamaica and could not forget the feeling of the music.

“At the same time, I’m beginning to hear rhythm and blues. I am also experiencing the beginnings of this movement coming out of Jamaica, with ska and the rocksteady rhythm. Instead of putting the songs (in Love Notes) in what typically would have been the setting, I said, no, I’m going to put it in the setting that brings me the nostalgia of when I was seven-eight years old in Jamaica,” says Alexander, took simple and popular love songs and put a little Jamaican flavour in them, making Love Notes a purposeful departure from Alexander’s primary catalogue. “I wanted to show that this so-called hotshot piano player can also embrace sweet songs, the kind that our mothers and our grandparents, who don’t know jazz, would sit back, and like. I think this is what grandparents and parents perhaps had heard that made them embrace and love each other and bring children into the world,” he says.

In 2006, Alexander released his live renditions of the music of legendary reggae artist Bob Marley, who, he calls a messenger of a higher spirit. “Some people have a sense of a great power above us. Bob Marley was not just a musician who played cute songs; he was a messenger. His version of religious expression was somewhat different to the typical Catholic version because a lot of what he said came right from the Christian Bible. He spoke in a powerful way. He was still a human being with flaws… But I’m deeply honoured to play this music,” he says.

When asked about what he is listening to these days, Alexander says, “Silence. The wind blowing, a bird chirping or maybe a truck backfiring, it’s just the life going around me. My brain is so filled with music. But I’ve heard that it’s crucial for me to keep it peaceful so that when I see the piano notes, I surrender to prayer and I go play. I see that high level of when you make music and you get goosebumps and you get thrilled,” he says.

While carrying a level of spontaneity to his performances, Alexander says,” Folks come to experience the Monty Alexander experience. Just come to experience it because I don’t know where it’s going to go,” says Alexander.

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