Pianist and educator Howie Alexander, who hails from Pittsburgh, grew up in a home filled with jazz, R&B, and funk.
"My dad had so many records. Just growing up in that environment, he would play them all the time. I really never had to discover jazz. It was on when I came home from the hospital. I didn't know it was weird to be young and into jazz. I just thought it was great music and I loved it."
Alexander spoke with WBGO's Doug Doyle prior to his set Friday night and his Saturday afternoon performance at the 2024 Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival. Howie is the 2024 B.U.I.L.D. Artist-in-Residence at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center/Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival.
Alexander is excited to be working with AWAACC CEO Janis Burley Wilson who created the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival in 2011.
"I'm glad they moved it back downtown. That's the way it used to be. It gives the entire city access. You still have to buy tickets to some events. This whole city will be able to hear it, see it, and just feel the vibe. Janis has done a fantastic job wherever it is, if it's over at Highmark Stadium field that's great too. It was bigger than life last year. I felt like a superstar last year. Both ways are great, but it's more Pittsburgh to have it in the street.
Howie Alexander began playing piano when he was 15, and 27 years later, with performances with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Poogie Bell, Ciaro, and the likes of Stanley Turrentine on his resume, the Duquesne University graduate performs as sideman or headliner at venues from Pittsburgh to Monaco. He has been a piano instructor at the Afro-American Music Institute since 1994, and now serves as Artistic Director.
"I'm a teaching artist. While I play music every day of the week, I also teach five days a week. I love to teach. It's a big part of being an artist to be able to pass it on and teach others. Every time I teach them I learn something."
Alexander cites a trio of mentors: Dr. James T. Johnson Jr. , founder of Afro-American Music Institute in Pittsburgh; jazz guitarist Jimmy Ponder, with whom Alexander had his first professional gig at the age of 17; and Dr. Nelson Harrison, former jazz trombonist with the Count Basie Orchestra. His repertoire is vast, from jazz and gospel, to funk and blues. He recently composed a silent film suite, a lost art, to accompany the Oscar Micheaux 1920 film, WITHIN OUR GATES, at the Black Bottom Film Festival.
The 2024 Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival, co-sponsored by the August Wilson African American Cultural Center and Highmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, runs through Sunday, September 22.
