Monty Alexander

Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1944, Monty Alexander grew up amid classical training, local clubs and early sessions connected with the ska and Jamaican scene of the early 1960s, before moving with his family to Miami and then joining New York in 1962. His piano playing sits in mainstream jazz, hard bop, and swing, with a highly rhythmic approach in which blues, the American songbook and Caribbean inflections—especially reggae, calypso, and mento—intersect. Monty Alexander recorded early under his own name with Alexander the Great in 1965, then developed in the 1970s an abundant discography ranging from jazz trio to more open formats, particularly around MPS. This period saw him performing with musicians such as Milt Jackson, Ray Brown, John Clayton, Jeff Hamilton, and Ernest Ranglin, whose presence clearly illuminates the double grounding of Monty Alexander between American jazz tradition and Jamaican heritage. From the 1990s onward, he more directly asserts this Caribbean dimension with albums such as Yard Movement (1996), Stir It Up: The Music of Bob Marley (1999), Monty Meets Sly and Robbie (2000), Goin’ Yard (2001), and Rocksteady with Ernest Ranglin (2004). Long-established in New York, Monty Alexander has continued to travel between clubs and festivals, solo, in a trio or with expanded ensembles, maintaining that supple, percussion-inflected phrasing that links jazz standards, Jamaican grooves and popular melodies.