Constantine Alexander on the cover of his debut album (from the Bandcamp Web page)
Today jazz musician Constantine Alexander, who plays both trumpet and flugelhorn, is releasing his debut album entitled Firetet. The release is being handled through Bandcamp, which had already created a Web page for processing pre-orders. That Web page has not yet been updated, meaning that only one of the seven tracks, “Waltzin’ Long,” is available for listening and download as of this writing. Presumably the Web page will be updated at some time later today.
Alexander leads a quintet, sharing the front line with Roy McGrath on tenor saxophone. Rhythm is provided by pianist Julius Tucker, Greg Essig on drums, and Ben Dillinger on acoustic bass. The advance material describes the content in a single sentence: “Alexander’s debut album Firetet is a no-nonsense, swinging hard-bop tribute to Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and to the great trumpet king Clifford Brown and his modern-day disciples Nicholas Payton and Sean Jones.” Personally, I would have put Brown at the head of the entire list, thanks to the wide diversity of dispositions that emerge from the album’s seven tracks, all of which are Alexander originals.
Mind you, when it comes to “modern jazz,” my heart is still in the Fifties, even if my efforts to build up a collection of recordings did not get under way until after 1995. Nevertheless, Alexander’s technique as both composer and performer quickly seized my attention. He seems to have found just the right “sweet spot” where the prodigious inventiveness of the Fifties “giants” have been given a thoroughly convincing contemporary point of view. I may not shift my attention entirely from Brown to Alexander, but I expect to revisit this new release for the impressive creative extent of its improvisations.
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