artist info

Eric Alexander started piano lessons at the age of six. He took up the clarinet at nine and switched to alto sax three years later. The tenor sax became his obsession at Indiana University Bloomington (1986-87). After transferring to William Paterson College he studied with Harold Mabern, Joe Lovano, Rufus Reid, and others. “The people I listened to in college are still the cats who are influencing me today,” Eric says. “The legacy left by Bird and all the bebop pioneers, that language and that feel—that's the bread and butter of everything I do.

In 1991 Eric competed against Joshua Redman and Chris Potter in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition. Placing second, this launched him into the whirlwind life of a professional jazz musician. He played with organ trios on Chicago’s South Side, made his recording debut with Charles Earland (Muse Records, 1991), and cut his first album as a leader, Straight Up (Delmark, 1991).

In 2004, Eric signed an exclusive contract with HighNote Records, an independent jazz label based in New York City. There he has amassed a considerable discography of critically acclaimed recordings. Most recent among them is Touching, and Chicago Fire.

Hard-bop and soul jazz piano giant, Harold Mabern was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. Like fellow Memphis jazz artists George Coleman, Booker Little, and Frank Strozier, Mabern attended Manassas High School, and after an early attempt at playing the drums, he taught himself piano and fell under the spell of pianist Phineas Newborn Jr., an influence that would shape and linger with Mabern for the rest of his life.

Along with some other Memphis musicians, Mabern moved to Chicago in in 1954 where he gained further influence from studying with pianist Ahmad Jamal and played in the hardbop group MJT + 3, before going on to New York City in 1959. One of his earliest significant gigs was an 18-month stay with Art Farmer and Benny Golson’s Jazztet. After the Jazztet disbanded, Mabern worked with Jimmy Forrest, Lionel Hampton, Donald Byrd and did a brief stint with Miles Davis in 1963. He worked with J.J. Johnson (1963-65), Lee Morgan (1965) and Hank Mobley- recording the album, Dippin’. Sonny Rollins, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Williams (1966-67) Mabern also played in a quartet with guitarist Wes Montgomery.

Between 1968-70, Mabern led four albums for Prestige, the first being A Few Miles From Memphis with a lineup that featured two saxophonists, one of them fellow Memphis native George Coleman. As the 1970s began, Harold Mabern became a key member of Lee Morgan’s working group and appeared on several live and studio recordings made by the trumpeter before his death in 1972. In 1971, he played on Stanley Turrentine’s The Sugar Man and Don’t Mess With Mr. T. album in 1973.

In more recent years, he has toured and recorded extensively with tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander. To date, Mabern and Alexander have appeared on over twenty CDs together. A longtime faculty member at William Paterson University since 1981, Mabern is also a frequent instructor at the Stanford Jazz Workshop.