{"id":7917,"date":"2016-10-27T19:01:26","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T02:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=7917"},"modified":"2016-10-27T19:01:26","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T02:01:26","slug":"paul-conley-on-joey-alexander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2016\/10\/paul-conley-on-joey-alexander\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Conley On Joey Alexander"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have a longstanding rule regarding child prodigies who emerge on waves of publicity: Approach with caution.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7918\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Joey-Alexander-1.jpg\" alt=\"joey-alexander-1\" width=\"210\" height=\"204\" \/>When the eleven-year-old Indonesian pianist Joey Alexander materialized last year in a flurry of accolades from Wynton Marsalis, Herbie Hancock and others, I kept him at arm\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s length. Now, I have paid close attention to his debut album, <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2eX3xLd\" target=\"_blank\">My Favorite Things<\/a>, and his second, <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2egz2jE\" target=\"_blank\">Countdown<\/a>. When someone proclaims the next new jazz giant, I will not abandon the practice of skepticism but I am happy to praise Mr. Alexander as that rare surprise, an extremely young soloist who materializes with developed technical and creative skills. Whether he will develop into a jazz master, no one can say. At this juncture, he is a good player, worthy of the attention he is getting.<\/p>\n<p>Recently, some of that attention came from the veteran jazz journalist Paul Conley of Capitol Radio in Sacramento, California. With Paul\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s permission,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.capradio.org\/83777\" target=\"_blank\"> here is a link<\/a> to his report.<\/p>\n<p>In his debut album, Joey Alexander chose to open with John Coltrane&#8217;s daunting &#8220;Giant Steps.&#8221; His accompanists were bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/f4V_uaxBVOw\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have a longstanding rule regarding child prodigies who emerge on waves of publicity: Approach with caution. When the eleven-year-old Indonesian pianist Joey Alexander materialized last year in a flurry of accolades from Wynton Marsalis, Herbie Hancock and others, I kept him at arm\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s length. Now, I have paid close attention to his debut album, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}