Her favorite things: World jazz, local roots

By BRIAN KLUEPFEL

John Jay graduate Alison Shearer debuts her new recording at the Bedford Playhouse on Oct. 18. DREW BORDEAUX PHOTO

The daughter of noted photographer John Shearer, Alison Shearer learned at an early age to make images of a different sort: aural. Beginning on the flute in elementary school, the Brooklyn-born, Katonah-raised jazz player soon switched to saxophone after being “hipped” to her father’s record collection, in particular, sax giant John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things.” 

“I was fascinated by it,” Shearer said. From there it was the legendary Cannonball Adderley, then “did a deep dive into Wayne Shorter and all the greats.” Surrounded by respected and beloved mentors/teachers like Warren Arbiter and the late Jeffrey Richardson, Shearer graduated from John Jay High School in 2006 and went on to the Manhattan School of Music. 

Along with her quartet of seven years, also Manhattan School of Music alumni, Shearer will debut her latest recording, “In the Garden,” at a pop-up concert at the Bedford Playhouse on Saturday, Oct. 18, at 8 p.m. Sponsored by Ian Hendrickson-Smith, aka Uncle Cheef, the show is Cheef’s way of keeping local music alive after his restaurant/music venue in Brewster closed earlier this year. 

Young by jazz standards, Shearer has been treading the boards around the world for quite some time with her quartet. The collective artistic intimacy resulted in her composing to meet her compatriots’ talents.

“I’ve been writing with this group for seven years, composing for their voices,” Shearer said. “I tour a ton, travel a lot.” (In fact, The Recorder caught up with her on a stop in Paris, on her way back to the states from a gig in Barcelona). She embraces music that “travels,” in a way, too. 

“I like albums that take you from one place to another,” she said. An example of that is the first song on “Garden,” “Liberty Market,” a dizzying musical wander echoing its namesake bazaar in Lahore, Pakistan.

The multi-reed player — she plays alto and soprano sax on the new album — also returns to her first instrument, the flute, on the bembé-inspired “Treehouse,” her flute underpinned with solid keyboard vamping by Kevin Bernstein. The quartet is rounded out by Marty Kenney on bass, and Horace Phillips on drums.

Shearer’s new record was also captured in an adventurous spirit, recorded live to tape, an analog nod to her inspiration from 1970s groups like the Headhunters, Herbie Hancock and Weather Report. ”We were lucky to record live to tape — you can hear that edge!” she enthused. 

The record also captures the traveling spirit and multiple influences of various world music, reflecting Shearer’s time with Sunny Jain’s Red Baraat and Wild, Wild East combos, exploratory mashups of Punjabi rhythms with a dash of hip-hop, punk, and jazz. 

Whether on the deep bass-y funk of “Homer,” the otherworldly, eerie synth of “I” bleeding into the ethereal, chiming keys of “Garden” or the swinging polyrhythm of “Skylark,” Shearer’s second album reflects one of her tenets: “Life itself rarely unfolds in 4/4 time,” she writes on Garden’s liner notes. 

“Multi-metric music is a signature of mine; lots of different odd meters,” Shearer said. “(Although) melody is center to my writing, it’s groove oriented but extraordinarily difficult.”

Hendrickson-Smith, host of the pop-up concerts in the wake of his Uncle Cheef music venue closing in May, is excited to have Shearer appearing at the Bedford event. She played three times at Smith’s Brewster restaurant, and he was impressed. 

“She has a real good grasp of the history (of jazz music) as well as an adventurous spirit to her,” Smith said. “She’s from the area so was a natural fit for this show. I think she’s gonna crush it.” 

Hendrickson-Smith, notable for his place with Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings as well as The Tonight Show Band, along with his wife, Jenny, have hosted a handful of the pop-up concerts since May in northern Westchester, as a way to maintain contact with their Cheef’s clientele while plotting their next move.