When a musician has five critically-lauded albums out before they're 16, you know they've got something special to offer.
Joey Alexander stepped onto the international jazz scene in 2013 when he won the Grand Prix at the Master-Jam Fest in Ukraine. He was nine years old. Soon after a YouTube video of him performing reached the ears of Jazz at Lincoln Center artistic director Wynton Marsalis, who invited him to New York for the organization's gala in 2014. At then ten years old, Alexander debuted in the United States and became an overnight sensation.
Now, almost a decade after his first international performance, Joey Alexander has become a solid fixture amongst jazz enthusiasts worldwide. And with this establishment comes a beautiful progression of style —although still capable of the flourishing technique that put him on the map, he now embraces the melodies of his original compositions with the mastery of experience.
Admirers say he's the "future of jazz," a heavy title for anyone, let alone a young man from Bali. But Joey embraced his love of the genre from the ripe old age of six, teaching himself to play by ear on a miniature electric keyboard. By eight, he knew this was what he was meant to do.
“Some people say: ‘I really love your music, I haven’t really listened to jazz yet, now I’m starting.’ I’m really just thankful that people want to listen to jazz," said Joey in an interview with The Guardian in 2016. "Because you know this music can be hip, I believe. Because it’s for all ages. Anyone can listen to it, and I hope people will play more and listen more to this music.”
Today, Joey Alexander is 19 and beginning to foster distance from his reputation as a child virtuoso. His talent has not dwindled — rather, his repertoire has matured, with the 2022 released Origin expounding such maturity and a reflection of the difficulties many of us faced over the past several years.
"Even before the pandemic, I've been writing these compositions. I really put my heart into this project," he says in an interview with Big Island Magazine. “I guess every project that I do I put my heart into it, but this one is very monumental. I feel this is really the one where I'm embracing the challenges — of course, the pandemic, two years of not being able to get out and perform and embracing that frustration. How do you go from frustration to something positive and inspirational?”
In 2022, Joey embraces hope for the younger generation attending his shows. "In your teenage years, or even as kids, you can be able to take away the message of unity — learning how to work together. It's like a community, and therefore music really puts you into a feeling. You do need a community of people to build each other up into something bigger than yourself."
"Alexander’s savvy musicianship, like that surrounding him here in its varied forms, is a source of constant surprise. That element has been a welcome hallmark of his for years now, but, as much as Origin depicts how much the still-young Indonesian man has developed since the 2015 release of his first album, My Favorite Things, it also displays how his various talents have grown by leaps and bounds since then. This Mack Avenue label debut intimates he will continue to evolve in a similarly dramatic fashion as time goes on." — Doug Collette, Glide Magazine
Joey Alexander performs his Jack Singer Concert Hall debut on April 28, 2023. Tickets are on sale now.