One of the pleasures of the work I do is that it sometimes puts me in cities I might otherwise have no immediate reason to visit. Next week it takes me to Melbourne, where I’ll also get to hear Joey Alexander play piano.
I feel fortunate to be able to mix the two. Work is the reason for the trip, but it doesn’t have to occupy the whole experience. A concert, a museum, a good meal or simply some time in the city can sit naturally around the work. I can do what I came to do, enjoy something of where I am, and call it a day’s work.
Alexander interests me partly because so many people have been able to watch his musical development in public. He became widely known while still very young, at a time when YouTube and other online media could put a jazz pianist in front of an audience far beyond the clubs, festivals and concert halls where the music had traditionally circulated. The child prodigy eventually has to become an adult musician, and I find that transition much more interesting than the original novelty.
There is a related idea in what Emmet Cohen has done with Live From Emmet’s Place. Cohen has used contemporary media to create an audience around a musical tradition more than a century old, bringing remarkable musicians together in a form that feels immediate rather than archival. I’ve spent many hours watching those performances. Philip Norris on bass and Joe Farnsworth on drums are recurring pleasures, and Farnsworth also remains one of the sharper dressers in jazz.
My interest in pianists goes back considerably further than YouTube.
My mother played classical piano, so I grew up hearing the instrument without thinking there was anything unusual about it. The piano itself had already been in the family for decades. My grandfather, who owned a car dealership, took it in trade for a car sometime in the 1920s. My mother played it, my sister learned on it, my daughter learned on it, and now another generation of the family has had its turn.
I took lessons for a while but never developed the connection to playing that other members of the family did. My own musical interests went elsewhere. What stayed with me was the pleasure of hearing somebody who really understands the instrument.
That has followed me through a lot of music. I remember Pat Metheny shows and hearing Lyle Mays play. More recently there has been the Cliburn, first as something I attended and then, in 2025, as something I followed from the screening recitals through every round of the competition.
Yunchan Lim is another reason I’ve become interested in watching young musicians develop. He was 18 when he won the gold medal at the 2022 Cliburn, becoming the youngest person ever to do so. His Liszt Transcendental Etudes from that competition are still among the performances I return to.
Talent at that level is easy to recognize, but talent by itself isn’t a very complete explanation. What interests me is the intersection of ability, tenacity, sustained work and opportunity. The public usually encounters a young musician at the moment all of that becomes visible: a competition, a recording, a concert or a video that suddenly reaches millions of people. What we don’t see as clearly are the years required to arrive at that point, or the work required to keep developing once the attention arrives.
That is part of what makes Alexander interesting to me now. When somebody becomes famous very young, it is easy to keep viewing him through the original story: the prodigy, the viral performance, the astonishing child. Eventually that description becomes less useful. Technique has to become musicianship, and an early reputation has to give way to an artistic life of its own.
My experience with the Cliburn has made that process particularly interesting to watch. In 2025 I followed the competition from the screening recitals through every round. I had opportunities to meet some of the pianists along the way, and I came home with recordings, photographs and memories that I value independently of who ultimately won. One of my favorites is a photograph of Aristo Sham and me comparing socks shortly before he was awarded the gold medal.
The attraction isn’t confined to classical music or straight-ahead jazz. Cory Henry can take keyboards somewhere else entirely. DOMi and JD Beck combine formidable technique with a very different musical vocabulary. What connects these musicians for me isn’t genre so much as the pleasure of hearing people who have paid close attention to their craft and then found something of their own to do with it.
That is what I’m looking forward to hearing from Joey Alexander in Melbourne.
The city is part of the pleasure as well. I’m fortunate that work sometimes gives me the geography. When it does, I try to make use of it: do the work, spend some time with the city, hear the music when the opportunity presents itself, and keep moving.