Monty Alexander
‘Love Notes’ (Monty Alexander Music)

Monty Alexander has long been a one-man Kingston Trio. This is a somewhat wiseguy, punny way of saying that the pianist, who was born in 1944 at Kingston, Jamaica, has always had three major strings to his bow, three big feathers in his cap.

He is a bebop virtuoso who apprenticed with the originators of the form, such as Ray Brown and Milt Jackson; he is a stalwart champion of the great American songbook, especially the legacies of Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra; and he is the world’s foremost avatar of Jamaican jazz, who combines the rhythms of his Caribbean homeland — calypso, mento, reggae — with North American harmonies and forms.  

A typical set by Mr. Alexander, such as the one he performed at Birdland last week, will combine all three, and introduce a great many more strings and feathers as well.

Mr. Alexander has long been a December regular at Birdland, and he was in town the week before Christmas to, among other things, launch his new album, “Love Notes.” This latest project is the first full album to feature Mr. Alexander as a vocalist. He has occasionally sung before; in fact, sometimes as an encore he will surprise a crowd by launching into Nat King Cole’s 1947 Trio arrangement of “Too Marvelous For Words,” complete with a carefully enunciated vocal in the King Cole style.  

Here, he sings on every track. In the notes, he recounts how Carmen McRae heard him singing during one of these encores in the 1970s and encouraged him to keep doing it. Clearly, this album is something he’s been working toward for a long time.  

There are several songs from the King Cole songbook that have resided in the vault for a while, including a performance of “Too Marvelous” taped at Barcelona in 1982; a “Straighten Up and Fly Right” from Frankfurt in 2004; and a lovely, understated treatment of “Faith Can Move Mountains” featuring trumpeter Roy Hargrove, who died in 2018. Likewise, his original “These Love Notes” co-stars keyboardist Joe Sample, who has been gone since 2014.

Mr. Alexander combines all of his strengths here; we get the same eloquent, inspired piano solos that we’re accustomed to hearing from him, great songs like “Day In, Day Out,” “The Nearness of You,” and “For Sentimental Reasons,” as well as a steady island beat that continues consistently through nearly every track.  

“As Time Goes By,” starts rather rhapsodically, à la Max Steiner and “Casablanca,” but then shifts into Calypso time. Mr. Alexander’s phrasing as a vocalist is no less steady and consistent, staying on the beat and singing with as much sincerity as he can muster. He sings like a man who has loved words and music for 70 years and now wants to give himself the gift of at last being able to work with both.

The set at Birdland last Thursday, with bassist Jason Brown and drummer Luke Sellick, was no less exemplary. He started with the “C-Jam Blues,” and then gifted us with a few Christmas songs, notably a Count Basie-influenced “Silver Bells,” from an album he cut with Tony Bennett and the Basie Orchestra. He also favored us with a few jazz standards, among them an exceptional “Body and Soul” out of the Nat Cole lineage, which referenced several of Cole’s classically styled signature quotes, “Humoresque” and “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” 

Mr. Alexander also delivered a few Bob Marley classics that seemed seasonally appropriate: “Redemption Song” has the right message for the end of the year and a time of new beginnings, while “Exodus” is precisely the song you want to hear during chanukah. 

He surprised us with a piano trio interpretation of one of the major works of relatively modern symphonic music, the “Concierto de Aranjuez,” that seamlessly transitioned transitioned between the work as composed by Joaquín Rodrigo in 1939 and Mr. Alexander’s own improvisations; even as someone who’s heard this concierto a thousand times, it was impossible to tell where Rodrigo ended and Mr. Alexander began. 

He further included “Brilliant Corners” from his 2019 album “Wareika Hill,” a set of what he describes as “Rasta” variations on the music of Thelonious Monk, thus, a further bebop-reggae mashup. 

Monty Alexander is that rare virtuoso who knows how to understate, and his singing chops — admittedly considerably less opulent than his piano chops — allows him to do that, to concentrate on the essential melody and lyrics with a highly focused intensity. His title song, “These Love Notes,” the track with Joe Sample on Fender Rhodes, shows how the British West indies has its own equivalent of the Central and South American bolero, a slow sensual rhythm for dancing or even just romantic contemplation.  

Likewise, “Island in the Sun” is a marvel of profound simplicity, featuring Mr. Alexander by himself, just his own piano accompaniment, singing the Harry Belafonte with the warmth that befits a song of home.

Mr. Alexander ended the set at Birdland with “Blue Monk,” not only extending the Monk theme, but ending, as he began, with the basic blues, and thus tying up the whole package with a big red Christmas bow.