Love Notes Monty Alexander

• 1Day in Day Out03:59
• 2These Love Notes04:54
• 3The Nearness of You (feat. Roy Hargrove)06:02
• 4As Time Goes By04:56
• 5Faith Can Move Mountains04:45
• 6Island in the Sun04:07
• 7To the Ends of the Earth04:58
• 8Moon River04:30
• 9Too Marvelous for Words (Live)02:55
• 10Straighten up and Fly Right (Live)02:32
• 11For Sentimental Reasons04:33
• Total Runtime48:11

Info for Love Notes

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.

Said Monty, “My desire was emboldened ever since one of our great Jazz vocalists, Carmen McRae, heard me sing a tune at the end of a concert and told me “Don’t stop singing!”, admonishing me like a loving aunt would. That was back in the 1970s so it took me fifty years, and a century later, but I am glad to finally introduce Monty the vocalist, and this collection of love songs.”

Thoughtfully curated, the eleven tracks on Love Notes are some of Monty’s favorite songs crafted and arranged in a totally unique setting. With the exception of “These Love Notes” (Monty’s original composition with lyrics by Brian Jobson), all of the songs have a direct connection to his childhood — the first songs he ever heard and loved — and they bring back the scent and romanticism of the Jasmine flowers Monty used to smell as a child in Montego Bay. “These songs harken back to innocent times, the 1950s, when I would hear calypsos and mentos in the streets,” continues Monty, “before I came to America, before the rise of Bob Marley, and certainly before I knew I would have this incredible career as a Jazz pianist with over 75 albums recorded to date. 75 albums as a pianist and one as a singer!”

Another important aspect of this album, regarding inspiration, is that period in Jamaica when Monty used to sneak out of school to go to the recording studio, during the time of Ska but also the time when Jamaicans had a love affair with these kinds of songs, songs from the great American Songbook but merged with Jamaican rhythms and vibrations. This was the late 50s and early 60s when Monty was 14/15 years old…Many identified these rhythms as “rockers”. Monty was there, and he was there at the beginning of ska as well – indeed a pioneer!

Ranging in the artist spectrum from Henry Mancini to Nat King Cole to Harry Belafonte and more, Monty couples his passion for the music with his extraordinary piano playing and the intimacy of his wonderful vocals, crafting an album that will resonate with the romantics in all of us and to be enjoyed for many years to come. The release of “Love Notes” will be accompanied by tour dates worldwide, and also in the works is “The Monty Alexander Movie,” a documentary on Monty’s life and music. Directed by Academy Award-winning cinematographer and veteran filmmaker Arthur Gordon, the project is currently in production in Jamaica, the U.S., and Europe.

Monty Alexander, vocals, piano, melodica, keyboards
George Benson, guitar
Ramsey Lewis, piano solo
Joe Sample, Fender Rhodes
Courtney Panton, bass
Paul Berner, bass
Hassan Shakur, bass
Karl Wright, drums, percussion
Steve Williams, drums
Quentin Baxter, drums
Bobby Thomas Jr., hand drums
Andy Bassford, rhythm guitar
Rubens de la Corte, guitar
Roy Hargrove, trumpet
Arturo Sandoval, trumpet

Monty Alexander
Jazz pianist Monty Alexander makes a point of telling his audiences that he was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1944, and that he immigrated to the United States in 1961. Alexander has never neglected his Carribean roots and has created many fruitful mashups of jazz with calypso, reggae, mento, and other island music. His two albums of the music of Bob Marley, Stir It Up (1999) and Concrete Jungle (2006) are particular triumphs, as was his 2011 Harlem – Kingston Express Live! which qualified him as virtually the only jazz pianist to be nominated for a Grammy for Best Reggae album.

At 74, he tours the world relentlessly with various projects, delighting a global audience drawn to his vibrant personality and soulful message. His spirited conception, documented on more than 70 CDs, draws upon the timeless verities: endless melody-making, effervescent grooves, sophisticated voicings, a romantic spirit, and a consistent predisposition, as Alexander says, “to build up the heat and kick up a storm.” In the course of any given performance, Alexander applies those aesthetics to repertoire spanning a broad range of jazz and Jamaican musical expression—the American songbook and the blues, gospel, and bebop, calypso and reggae. Like his “eternal inspiration,” Erroll Garner, Alexander—cited as the fifth greatest jazz pianist ever in The Fifty Greatest Jazz Piano Players of All Time (Hal Leonard Publishing) and mentioned in Robert Doerschuk’s 88: The Giants of Jazz Piano—gives the hardcore-jazz-obsessed much to dig into while also communicating the message to the squarest “civilian.”

This album contains no booklet.