Ralph Alessi and his quintet, "This Against That," will fill Studzinski Recital Hall tonight with the jazz music that has made them some of the preeminent jazz musicians in the Northeast over the past 10 years.
Alessi plays the trumpet and is one of the leading jazz trumpeters of his generation. He and the members of "This Against That", who have played together for five years, are all faculty members at the Brooklyn-based School for Improvisational Music (SIM). The quintet consists of Alessi on trumpet, John Hebert on bass, Tony Malaby on saxophone, pianist Andy Milne, and drummer Mark Ferber.
SIM was founded in 2001 by Alessi, who remains the school's director. The school was founded, as stated on their Web site, "for instrumentalists wanting to study jazz in all of its contemporary forms and implications." All of the faculty members at SIM are musicians independent of the school as well, enabling them to bring their performance experience to their teaching at the school.
On Friday and Saturday, Alessi and the other members of the quintet will be bringing that experience to Bowdoin classrooms as well in both group and private lessons.
"Basically we are trying to share our approach to improvising with some of the Bowdoin students," Alessi said. "What is that approach? To improvise spontaneously in the moment with an emphasis on intense listening as well as a necessity to creatively bring forth ideas that best serve the unfolding music."
Each member of the quintet has been and continues to be active in performing jazz around the country and around the world.
Alessi himself has performed in Europe, China, Japan, Cuba, Mexico, Korea, and Israel with the likes of Steve Coleman, Uri Caine, Don Byron, Fred Hersch, and Sam Rivers. He has five recordings to his name, and alongside his work at SIM, he has been on the jazz faculty of New York University since 2002.
Bassist John Hebert, born and raised in Louisiana, has experience with both the southern jazz of New Orleans and the northern style of New York. In 2006, he was featured on an album by Andrew Hill that was awarded Jazz Record of the Year by Doanbeat's Jazz Critics Poll.
Tony Malaby, the quintet's saxophonist, is originally from Phoenix, Ariz., but has been based in New York since 1995. His debut album, "Sabino," released in 2000, made the New York Times and the Philadelphia Paper's top 10 jazz lists for that year.
Pianist and Toronto native Andy Milne graduated from NYU in 1990 and moved permanently to New York one year later. He was voted "Rising Star Keyboardist" by the highly-respected Downbeat Magazine in 2004. His popular group Dapp Theory blends funk, hip-hop, and jazz, and have just released a new record.
Drummer Mark Ferber is from San Francisco but currently lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. Though he teaches at SIM, he maintanes a busy playing schedule on both coasts, as well as in Europe.
On Friday, Alessi and his quintet will perform a set of Alessi's original compositions. Some of them will be from his first album titled "Look," while others will be from his newest record, which will be released later this year. The performance will also feature brand-new songs.
Alessi and his quintet will perform at Kanbar Auditorium in Studzinski Recital Hall tonight at 7:30 p.m. The concert is free and open to the public.