Jovan Alexandre is an emerging jazz tenor saxophone phenomenon, known for the brightness of his tone and the elegant bearing of his compositions, who may be situated, broadly speaking, within the penumbra of a hard-bop style made popular in Alexandre's native Connecticut by alto saxophonist Jackie McLean [1931-2006] in his later years. Alexandre made his New York City debut as a leader at this yea
r's prestigious Winter JazzFest [on January 9, 2015]. His first album as a leader, Collective Consciousness, will be released worldwide on February 24, 2015 [on Xippi Phonorecords, XP22540]. Just as Jackie McLean himself had – in such albums for Blue Note as Let Freedom Ring [1962] and One Step Beyond [1963] – extrapolated upon both the lyricism and projection of a Charlie Parker or a Dexter Gordon and the angular modes and scales of John Coltrane, so has Jovan Alexandre positioned himself as a spiritual heir to McLean with authoritative and imaginative excursions into the free-flowing modernist colloquy pioneered by McLean. Alexandre's bandmates – guitarist Andrew Renfroe, pianist Taber Gable, bassist Matt Dwonszyk, and drummer Jonathan Barber – are similarly attuned to the aesthetic of controlled passion that Alexandre has inherited from McLean, so there is a certain hard-bop (and modernist) classicism at work in Collective Consciousness. Alexandre's uniqueness, though, says one of Alexandre's mentors, fellow tenor saxophonist René McLean, “lies in his personal sound. He plays free of bombast, full of texture. His sound can variously seem molten and sharp-cornered within the same tune, sometimes practically within the same phrase. The melody lines are stately, whatever their tempo. Yet an understated, almost implied, restlessness inheres in nearly all his solos on Collective Consciousness.”
Alexandre’s native Wallingford, Connecticut is fifteen miles due north of New Haven. Several times a week during his high school years, he made the further trek northward to Hartford, a city rich in jazz history, to study at the Artists Collective, a neighborhood institution founded to promote the art and culture of the African diaspora and much beloved of Hartford’s African-American and Caribbean communities. The Artists Collective was founded in 1969 by Jackie McLean with his wife Dollie McLean, transplanted New Yorkers, at a time of cultural and political ferment. The ensuing forty-five years have seen the Artists Collective evolve from humble physical beginnings in borrowed premises to become one of the nation’s most impactful grassroots teaching institutions in music – especially jazz – and other performing arts. In the 1980's, the University of Hartford’s Hartt School, a nationally prestigious conservatory, asked Jackie McLean to establish a jazz performance department. Alexandre is one of dozens of alumni of the Artists Collective to have continued their studies at Hartt. He graduated with distinction [in 2011] from the jazz program, now formally known as the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz. At Hartt, in addition to intensive learning with Jackie McLean’s own son, René, Alexandre also studied with five other direct protégés of Jackie McLean, namely tenor saxophonist Jimmy Greene, alto saxophonist Kris Allen,pianist and arranger Chris Casey, trombonist Steve Davis, and bassist Nat Reeves. These instrumentalists are all key contributors to what some have called a “Hartford sound” grounded in Jackie McLean’s teachings and continuing influence, and especially his notions of historicity and the value of hand-to-hand transmission of jazz knowledge. Even before graduating from Hartt, Alexandre had begun to earn a reputation as one of the most interesting of the new tenor saxophone soloists, through appearances with several top-name musicians such as Hank Jones, Dionne Warwick, Curtis Fuller, Harold Mabern, Larry Willis, Charles Tolliver, Randy Brecker, Antoine Roney, Benito Gonzalez, Shimrit Shoshan, and Kendrick Oliver & The New Life Jazz Orchestra. Alexandre and his current group have honed their work as a unit in regular appearances in all the principal jazz venues in Connecticut, notably New Haven's The 9th Note, Cafe 9, and the Owl Shop, and Hartford's Black-Eyed Sally's, the Bushnell Park Pump House Gallery, and the Charter Oak Cultural Center, and in those two cities' summer jazz festivals. They have also become habitués of the New York City jam sessions at Smalls, Fat Cat, Dizzy's, Minton's, and other new Harlem and Brooklyn venues. With the release of his debut album Collective Consciousness, an inevitable migration southward to New York City for more regular appearances there, and national and international touring on the horizon, Alexandre is poised for wider recognition as leader of his own ensembles, as a featured soloist, and as a composer of polished skill and high invention.
