Joe Alterman lands new jazz show at WABE

Jazz pianist Joe Alterman is starting his own WABE radio show on July The Upside of Jazz Photo provided by WABE Like numerous native Atlantans jazz pianist Joe Alterman has been listening to H Johnson s jazz show on WABE for years The greater part exciting thing to me about getting my driver s license when I was was the fact that I could go somewhere on a Saturday night and then leave that place and drive around listening to H Alterman declared He turned me on to so much music that has changed my life Now Alterman has the opportunity to do the same thing On July the first episode of Atlerman s new radio show The Upside of Jazz will premiere on WABE The show will play on Saturday evenings at p m Alterman started piano lessons at age four he didn t love it at first he kept getting in trouble for changing the notes But while he didn t without delay take to the piano he loved going to bluegrass shows with his dad He got turned onto jazz music and back onto the piano by hearing jazz musicians take popular songs and make them their own Oscar Peterson if he played a song like You Are My Sunshine that I heard at a bluegrass festival the way in which he played the melody and interpreted it would be so cool Alterman explained It just kind of opened my eyes to this whole interpreting songs thing Decades later Alterman has a wealth of jazz knowledge he s ready to share with his hometown Each episode of The Upside of Jazz will feature music and storytelling centering around a weekly theme Alterman will talk about his favorite tracks and talk to artists about theirs as well as discuss his musical journey He is particularly looking forward to sharing music and information about his mentors Les McCann Ramsey Lewis and Ahmad Jamal I ve been really lucky to get to know a lot of the legends and learn from them Alterman announced One of the reasons I want to share all that is because I feel like you often hear the term Music is life I never knew what that meant I feel like a lot of the things that I ve learned from these great musicians are things you can carry into your life Alterman is aware that jazz doesn t necessarily have the cultural cache that it once did in the th century Through The Upside of Jazz he hopes to help make jazz more accessible to a wider audience A lot of people have a negative preconceived notion when they hear the word jazz he explained What happens to me a lot and this happened to my mentors in the s too is that so a multitude of times people will come to our gigs and say I don t like jazz but I like that And I m like Well that is jazz Alterman noted that he feels like people tend to shy away from jazz because they feel like they don t know enough about the genre to really enjoy it But it s just like any other genre he commented The same things that people might go wild for at a rock show a drum fill a guitar solo are the exact same things that excite people at a jazz show In other genres of music people can right now connect to the moments that make jazz really special that makes all music really special Alterman announced But there s a distance from it in jazz Alterman announced that watching someone like H Johnson teach Atlanta about jazz for all these years has taught him a lot about how to approach his own show Watching how he would present someone like John Coltrane whose music really ranges from traditional to very avant garde I learned what resonates with the general audience by watching how he would present audiences artists like that Alterman revealed The name of the show comes from a song Alterman wrote during the early days of the COVID- pandemic called The Upside of Down The emotional core of that song reminded him of a quote from jazz saxophonist Johnny Griffin Jazz is music made by and for people who choose to feel good in spite of conditions To me that s what it is Alterman announced The post Joe Alterman lands new jazz show at WABE appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta