Monty Alexander The Montreaux Years

Love Notes, a brand-new album of eleven tracks with vocals and piano by Monty Alexander, is set for release on August 19th, 2022. The collection represents the culmination of Monty’s decades-long desire to record a vocal album after releasing 75 piano projects over the course of his illustrious, critically-acclaimed career.

Jazz purists may turn up the nose at this jazz-reggae summit meeting, but that's their loss. It's not that they wouldn't have the right to be suspicious - experiments in jazz-reggae fusion do not have a distinguished history. But the combination of Jamaican-born jazz pianist Monty Alexander and reggae godfathers Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare works beautifully here for a number of reasons: first of all, Alexander is a gifted melodist with an unerring sense of groove (not always a given with jazz players), and second of all, Sly and Robbie emancipated themselves long ago from reggae's rhythmic strictures, so there's lots of variety on this album…

Pianist Monty Alexander's "Ivory And Steel" group combines together bop-based jazz with Jamaican calypsoes and West Indian rhythms. On this quite enjoyable set, Alexander utilizes both Othello and Len "Boogsie" Sharpe on steel drums, either Marshall Wood or Bernard Montgomery on bass, drummer Marvin "Smitty" Smith and the hand drums of Robert Thomas Jr. Alexander contributed four of the rhythmic originals which are joined by some Jamaican folk songs (including "Sly Mangoose"), Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" and a couple of obscurities. The accessible results are often memorable.