Welcome to the New York Times Popcast, your unknown pleasure of music

criticism and junior pedagogy. I'm your host Ben Ratliff. Oh, I'm going to do. The And today our guest is Nate Chinan. Hey Nate. Hey, Ben.

Nate has an article on Joey Alexander, the 11 year old piano virtuoso,

from Bali, grew up in Indonesia,

currently living in New Jersey,

his first, is it his first?

I always hesitate before saying first with these prodigies,

because you know that they've got like five records put up by their parents.

He's been biding his time.

Yeah, so it's his first record called My Favorite Things

on the Motema label.

And coming in, we heard a little bit of Joy Alexander,

the 11-year-old Joey Alexander playing my favorite things.

So Nate, the first question, how is Joey Alexander different from many other young jazz whizkids that you and I have seen in various settings.

I think the way to answer it is to tell you how I first heard him and how most people here

in New York first heard him playing a ballad.

I was not at the Jazz at Lincoln Center gala in 2014 at which he made his sort of

momentous first appearance but I was at a gala a few months later for the Jazz Foundation of America at the Apollo Theater.

That evening was a tribute to Herbie Hancock and as part of the program they had Herbie out, and then they brought out Joey Alexander, who I had heard about.

I had seen some sort of semi-viral YouTube clips of, and then there he was. He sat down on the bench and he played round midnight with

Herbie basically at his elbow watching very closely as he played. Just solo. First of all that's an extraordinary amount of

pressure for a kid and secondly it was a pretty ravishing arrangement of

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