Eric Alexander, born in Illinois in 1968 to a musical family, began piano lessons when he was six years old. He took up clarinet at nine, switched to alto sax when he was 12, and converted to tenor when jazz became his obsession during his one year at the University of Indiana. At William Paterson College in New Jersey he advanced his studies under the tutelage of Harold Mabern, Joe Lovano, Rufus Reid, and others.
During the 1990s, after placing second behind Joshua Redman in the 1991 Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition, Alexander threw himself into the whirlwind life of a professional jazz musician. He cut his first album as leader in 1992, and in 1998 came the first recording by One For All, Alexander's ongoing band with Jim Rotondi, Steve Davis, Joe Farnsworth, Peter Washington, and Dave Hazeltine.
Deeply rooted in the bop-based jazz tradition, Alexander has a warm, finely burnished tone and a robust melodic and harmonic imagination. Clearly one of the best and most promising tenor saxophonists today, Alexander has recorded many albums for Japanese independent label Venus Records and is hugely popular in Japan.
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