{"id":17304,"date":"2015-09-26T11:49:09","date_gmt":"2015-09-26T15:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=17304"},"modified":"2017-04-05T12:14:14","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T16:14:14","slug":"weekend-music-break-joey-alexander-my-favorite-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/weekend-music-break-joey-alexander-my-favorite-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Music Break: Joey Alexander, “My Favorite Things”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"James<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: Album art by James Gulliver Hancock, for Joey Alexander’s debut, <\/em>My Favorite Things (2015).]<\/em><\/p>\nO<\/span>ne of the most famous descriptions of some unlikely cultural phenomenon or another goes like this, taking various specific forms depending on the phenomenon in question:<\/p>\n

Sir, [phenomenon]<\/em> is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Joey<\/a>The original comes from James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson<\/em>, quoting SJ himself. There, the phenomenon is “a woman’s preaching.” But it’s hard for me not to think of the quip in connection with Joey Alexander’s jazz piano work. Because — beautifully fluid, virtuosic, inspired, inspiring<\/em> though it may be — at the time he recorded and released this debut album a few months ago, he was all of eleven years old<\/em>. The photo at right (click it to enlarge) is one of my favorites from the little booklet enclosed with the album — it should give you some idea of the marvel of the cultural phenomenon of the moment.<\/p>\n

I don’t want to make too much of this as a novelty. (In writing about Alexander, one New York Times<\/em> observer said<\/a>, “The acclamation given to musical prodigies usually involves some mix of circus-act astonishment and commodity futures trading.”) No, really — all I wanted to do was to offer you a solid hour of nice, not-at-all challenging weekend listening.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: Album art by James Gulliver Hancock, for Joey Alexander’s debut, My Favorite Things (2015).] ne of the most famous descriptions of some unlikely cultural phenomenon or another goes like this, taking various specific forms depending on the phenomenon in question: Sir, [phenomenon] is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs. It is not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2252,74],"tags":[2438,2498,4184,4185],"class_list":{"0":"post-17304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-midweek-music-break","7":"category-music","8":"tag-piano","9":"tag-jazz","10":"tag-joey-alexander","11":"tag-child-prodigies","12":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4v6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17304"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19046,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17304\/revisions\/19046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}