Han, sax and all that jazz
‘Catch a Rising Star’ series ends on a high note
by Chris Moore

SCOTTSDALE – No mistake, man. This kid’s got chops.

He can blow the sax with the best of them. And he’ll be doing just that next week, when he performs with his quartet at ASU Kerr Cultural Center in the last concert of its “Catch a Rising Star” series, opening for local jazz piano fixture Armand Boatman who will be playing with his trio.

You may or may not have heard of him, but as time passes and his music fills the air, there are       increasingly more people in the  former category than in the latter.

It’s Alex Han, on the saxophone.

“Alex is like the Tiger Woods of jazz,” says Joel Robin Goldenthal, executive director of Jazz in  Arizona, which is co‑presenting the “Catch a Rising Star” series at Kerr.

He’s now 18 years old. He’s been studying sax since he was just a kid. He made his first CD at 14, titled, aptly, “Fourteen.” Earlier this year he won the ASCAP Foundation Young Jazz Composer Award, and soon afterwards he signed with Rico Reeds to be their artist endorsee.

In the fall, he’ll be going to Berklee College of Music in Boston on a Presidential Scholarship–an honor awarded to only five students a year–which covers full tuition and room and board for four years. According to Han, Berklee is “the top contemporary music school in the country and probably the world.”

He’ll be joining fellow Alex Han Quartet member, guitarist Buddy Jones, who will be starting his  second year at Berklee when Han matriculates as a freshman. In addition to Jones on guitar, and Han on sax, the quartet playing at Kerr will feature Chris Finet on bass and Rob Moore on drums.

“I started playing sax when I was 8 years old,” Han remembers. “My mom and dad wanted me to have a creative outlet–not just sit around with junk food and the TV–and they both loved the sax. I remember the first day my dad got me my sax. I played so hard I thought, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ But my dad told me to persevere.”

One year later, Han says, he began feeling that maybe he had an innate talent for the instrument.

“I’m dying to play at Carnegie Hall,” Han says. Undoubtedly, the way he’s going, it won’t be long before he does. He’s already performed at Lincoln Center, the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center, Dizzy Gillespie’s Club Coca Cola and The Blue Note, as well as many jazz festivals including the North Sea Jazz Festival in Holland, the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, Festival de Jazz en Lapataia in Uruguay, the Telluride Jazz Festival in Colorado and the Art Tatum Jazz Heritage Festival in Ohio.