Concert Review: The Monty Alexander Trio

Few audience experiences can compete with the delight of seeing world-class music performed off the beaten path of America's large cities. To an audience of New Yorkers, a concert bill topped by the likes of pianist Monty Alexander might sound like a typical weekday. To an audience of rural Marylanders however, it's unheard-of. Thus my surprise and excitement when hearing of the Alexander Trio's visit to the Avalon Theatre, a venue on the remote eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay.

Drawing musicians out of major cities takes money, a fact that often prompts organizers to host concerts of the staggering size and impersonality that characterizes many rural jazz festivals. Not so at the Avalon Theatre, which seats only 380, and still bears some acoustic resemblance to the movie theater it once was. The Avalon allows listeners to hear jazz music in the intimacy in which it thrives.

With a pedigree to rival any jazz musician's – including stints with the likes of Milt Jackson and Ray Brown – Monty Alexander's credibility is undisputed. What sets his music apart, though, is not its excellence, but its exuberance. After just over two hours of music, it was not the complexity or beauty of the music that had the audience raving, but the overwhelming experience of having encountered a personality whose joys and sorrows, past and present, were so eloquently and convincingly expressed in his music as to evoke empathy in an audience for a man they'd never met.

Alexander expresses himself in a mixture of languages, ranging from blues, bebop, and stride piano to the reggae tradition of his native Jamaica. Unafraid of simplicity, he's as likely to plunk out a tried-and-true gospel lick as an extended soloistic line. His trio, made up of Lorin Cohen on bass, and George Fludas on drums, picks up on Alexander's movement, complimenting his variety.

Cohen's energy on stage pulls in collaborator and audience member alike. His taste is mature both in soloistic contexts, where he shows patience in melodic development, and in more typical bass roles, where his tone, thick and warm, supports his fellows unobtrusively. Fludas' poise is extreme enough to be perceived as nonchalance. An efficient drummer, he exudes ease, a demeanor that serves as an interesting counterpoint to Alexander's emotion.

The concert’s gospel-heavy program featured renditions of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “When the Saints Go Marching In,” “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” and “Come Sunday,” prompting at least one audience member to smilingly suggest that Alexander make an altar call at his next performance. The real implications of Alexander's program, however, were best summarized by the artist himself, when he commented on the centerpiece of the first half of the concert: “First we had despair, then we had hope. I believe in such a thing.”