Monty Alexander

Born in Kingston, Jamaica on June 6, 1944, Monty Alexander discovered his love for the piano at a very young age; he began tinkering at the age of four, taking lessons by the time he was six, in 1950. Although he studied classical piano in his lessons, when he became a teenager, an element of rebellion kicked in and he found jazz. He started playing in clubs in his hometown of Kingston, Jamaica. After his family relocated to Miami, Florida in 1961, he got to try his hand as a session musician on recordings with Clue J & His Blues Blasters. Building up a reputation as a sterling musician and leader, he started his own dance orchestra, Monty and the Cyclones, and began touring the clubs. He moved to New York in 1962 and played the famous Jilly's jazz club, where he performed with Frank Sinatra. He travelled to California in '64 to record his debut studio album, Alexander the Great, and began touring before returning to the studio to record with the likes of Milt Jackson and Ernest Ranglin. Throughout the 1970s, Monty Alexander continued to rack up the collaborations with big names including Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Morgan, Benny Golson, and Mary Stallings. Going back to his roots in the 1990s, he formed a reggae band and released several albums including 1999’s Stir It Up: The Music of Bob Marley. Monty Alexander continued to record his own albums including Island Grooves (2000), Steaming Hot (2004), Wareika Hill Rastamonk Vibrations (2019), and D-Day (2024). He was also the subject of pianist Donald Vega's 2015 album With Respect to Monty, which saw Vega tackle some of Monty Alexander's best-known recordings.

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