Joey Alexander, an 11-Year-Old Jazz Sensation Who Hardly Clears the Piano’s Sightlines
The cheers rang loud and long for Joey Alexander after he had played his last delicate piano chord in a recent sold-out set at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in Manhattan.
Beaming at his standing ovation, he stood between his bassist and his drummer, intent on taking a group bow. The scene was sweetly comical: The top of his head barely grazed their chests.
Which only made sense, given that Joey, jazz’s latest media star, is 11 years old.
This was far from his first turn in the spotlight. He became an overnight sensation— not too strong a term — with his guest performance a year ago at a Jazz at Lincoln Center gala, which won him rave reviews. His debut album, “My Favorite Things” (Motéma), is out this week, and he is booked for a series of notable appearances in the coming months, including one at the Newport Jazz Festival in August.
Discovered in Jakarta, Indonesia, about three years ago, Joey moved with his parents to New York last year, with the help of jazz luminaries like the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who called him “my hero” on Facebook and with whom he now shares a manager.
It’s all part of the improbable life of a child prodigy. Joey may be the most talked-about one that jazz has seen in a while, though he is hardly alone. There’s José André Montaño, a 10-year-old blind pianist from Bolivia; Kojo Roney, a 10-year-old drummer who had a concert residency last month in Brooklyn; and Grace Kelly, 22, an alto saxophonist who made her first album at 12. The list goes on, with some prodigies developing major careers and others falling short of their early promise.
It is natural to harbor mixed feelings about this phenomenon, and for a critic it’s all but imperative. The acclamation given to musical prodigies usually involves some mix of circus-act astonishment and commodity futures trading. All the attention lavished on them can distort the ecology of an art form, even while bringing encouraging news about its survival. And, as with any celebrated young talent, there is a question of intention: Who benefits most from the renown these performers receive? Is there a way to marvel at mind-blowing precocity without stunting an artist’s development?
Joey looked like a cherub several years ago when his reputation began to build in jazz circles: small in stature, with a thick mop of black hair over a face that still showed traces of baby fat. He is taller now, though the sight of him at a grand piano can still be disconcerting, especially when you hear what he plays.
In person he comes across like any polite, intelligent middle-school boy with highly focused interests. He showed up for a stroll in Central Park last week in jeans and a Joy Division T-shirt. “Um, I don’t know the band so much,” he admitted, “but I like the shirt.”
He clearly loves and respects his art form. “Jazz is a hard music,” he said in response to a question about heightened expectations, “and you have to really work hard and also have fun performing; that’s the most important thing.”
Jazz prodigies rarely have full command of their artistry. They tend to exhibit a superabundance of technique and core knowledge but a more deficient supply of the intangibles — what jazz partisans mean when they praise with the word “maturity.” And even the most virtuoso interpretation of composed material is of limited use in jazz, at least when it comes to a solo career.
For a jazz pianist, the mastery entails a staggering breadth of knowledge about harmony, rhythm and orchestration, all converging in an eloquent synthesis.
Joey Alexander has a handle on a good deal of that. “My Favorite Things,” produced by Jason Olaine, the director of programming and touring for Jazz at Lincoln Center, shows him to be a thoughtful musician as well as a natural one, with a sophisticated harmonic palette and a dynamic sensitivity.
On the album, Joey worked with top-tier players like the bassist Larry Grenadier. “I was wary,” Mr. Grenadier said of the invitation to record. “What I typically find with kid prodigies is that they come from this clinical, Western European way of accumulating knowledge. What I found with Joey is that he’s coming from a more intuitive, communal way of playing music, which is so beautiful to see.”
By and large the album is characterized by disarming self-possession, especially in light of its back story, which is hard to ignore. Joey, whose full name is Josiah Alexander Sila, was born in Bali, many miles from the nearest major jazz hub. His earliest encounters with jazz were through the CDs that his father, Denny Sila, had brought home in the 1990s, after earning a degree in finance at Pace University in Manhattan.
He and Joey’s mother, Fara, ran a tourism business. They are soft-spoken, friendly and unassuming: seemingly the furthest thing from stage parents, although they take clear pride in Joey’s talent. As for his career, “We’re flowing with it,” Mr. Sila said over lunch in Central Park. “We never expected anything.”
