Clinician and performing artist Eric Alexander electrifies a room full of serious sax students with a dizzying array of demonstrations and sound advice on a variety of topics from tone production to reed selection to practice and performance techniques. Aprox 90 minutes!
"It's not so much how much you know. It's how well you know the things you know and how well you're able to combine them so that you can speak clearly."
About Eric Alexander:
Boasting a warm, finely burnished tone and a robust melodic and harmonic imagination, tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander has been exploring new musical worlds from the outset. He started out on piano as a six-year-old, took up clarinet at nine, switched to alto sax when he was 12, and converted to tenor when jazz became his obsession during his one year at the University of Indiana, Bloomington (1986-87). At William Paterson College in New Jersey he advanced his studies under the tutelage of Harold Mabern, Joe Lovano, Rufus Reid, and others. "The people I listened to in college are still the cats that are influencing me today," says Alexander. "Monk, Dizzy, Sonny Stitt, Clifford Brown, Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, Joe Henderson--the legacy left by Bird and all the bebop pioneers, that language and that feel, that's the bread and butter of everything I do."
-Excert from Masterclass with Eric Alexander
Featuring the Mike Le Donne Quartet:
Eric Alexander, Tenor Saxophone
Peter Bernstein, Guitar
Mike Le Donne, B-3
Joe Farnsworth, Drums
