Joe Alterman feat. Houston Person | "Brisket For Breakfast"

Atlanta-Based Pianist Joe Alterman Makes a Buoyant Cross-Generational Pairing with Tenor Sax Giant Houston Person on Their Joyous New Live Album

Brisket for Breakfast, out February 7, Features

Bassist Kevin Smith and Drummer Justin Chesarek on a

Lively Set of Standards, Ballads and Blues

Growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, pianist Joe Alterman wasn’t raised with the sounds of jazz in his ears. Though he’d quickly come to love the full panoply of jazz styles and become an acclaimed torchbearer for the music’s tradition, Alterman’s first musical passions were bluegrass and the blues. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that when he did start exploring the jazz pantheon, it wasn’t bebop modernists like Bill Evans that lured him in – it was blues-rooted greats like Oscar Peterson, Ramsey Lewis, Les McCann, or Houston Person.

The connection that Alterman felt with those greats as a listener has, in many cases, long since been surpassed by the connections that he’s made with his heroes as a collaborator. Following on the heels of 2023’s rollicking and emotional Big Mo & Little Joe, documenting his close friendship and onstage partnership with the late McCann, comes Brisket for Breakfast, a joyous live recording pairing Alterman and his Atlanta-based trio with Person’s burly embrace of a tenor sound.

Out February 7, 2025, Brisket for Breakfast lives up to the down-home bonhomie and southern-fried soul suggested by its title. Aside from their shared musical philosophies, Alterman and Person have bonded over a mutual love of good food, particularly southern home cooking, and their exuberant, soul jazz-inspired interpretations of familiar standards, ballads and blues goes down with the savory warmth of the best comfort food. As the revered critic Nat Hentoff once wrote about the saxophonist’s timeless sound, “Houston Person is always as contemporary as an expression of love.”

“Every time we’re on stage together,” Alterman says, “from the first note I hear I feel so lucky to be in the room with Houston, let alone playing with him. His sound makes me realize how great it is to be alive.”

“We play the good stuff,” adds Person with a characteristic chuckle. “I really like the spontaneity that comes out on a live album, and Joe and I have a lot of fun with live performances. He plays with a lot of humor and he’s just an all-around nice guy.”

Brisket for Breakfast was recorded at a pair of concerts in Georgia: one at the Breman Museum & Cultural Center in Atlanta and a second a few weeks later at the Savannah Music Festival. Throughout the album, the pair is deftly supported by Alterman’s longtime trio of bassist Kevin Smith and drummer Justin Chesarek, who also joined the pianist for Big Mo & Little Joe.

Steeped in southern culture, the trio evoke the traditions that the South Carolina-reared Person is imbued with. “Joe keeps that southern heritage alive,” the saxophonist says. “You get a little bit of country and western, a little bit of gospel, he plays all of that stuff with feeling. We have a wonderful time recreating those older sounds.”

In his earliest years, Alterman would play along at home with Person’s recordings. He still recalls the envy he felt when a friend of his father’s returned from a trip to New York City having seen the tenor titan in concert. The two first crossed paths once Alterman had made the move to New York, when Person arrived at NYU in 2010 to give a master class. Most of his classmates were more focused on complex modern jazz and were treating Person’s visit as a night off.

As Alterman recalls, “Houston walked in the room and said, ‘Who wants to play some blues?’ Everyone stood up and he asked, ‘How’s the key of F?’ Something like fifteen people lined up to take a solo. Then Houston counted off the slowest blues imaginable, the first few people couldn’t make it through, and he very quickly got the message across that the blues is not easy.”

Despite a more than half-century difference in age, Alterman and Person hit it off immediately. The elder saxophonist soon became a mentor and ultimately a close collaborator. Person joined Alterman for the pianist’s senior recital, launching an ongoing partnership that has included guest appearances on two of Alterman’s albums (2012’s Give Me the Simple Life and 2015’s Georgia Sunset, which Person also produced). Both of them were determined to culminate their relationship by documenting the joy and soul of their live performances.

Their chemistry is evident from the outset on Brisket for Breakfast. The album begins with the Sammy Cahn/Jimmy Van Heusen standard “The Second Time Around,” with Person playfully blowing light, breathy figures in a relaxed duet with Smith. The tune kicks into a gentle swing as Alterman and Chesarek enter at a genteel lope guaranteed to put a smile on the listener’s face.

“That’s All” showcases Person’s more elegant, tender side, while the lesser-known classic “Namely You” – a nod to Savannah native Johnny Mercer at his hometown’s namesake festival, is freewheeling and high-spirited. “Since I Fell for You” digs deep into the blues, “Only Trust Your Heart” is a sprightly, Latin-tinged lark, “Never Let Me Go” – not the Livingston/Evans standard but the Joseph Scott hit recorded by everyone from Johnny Ace to The Impressions to Luther Vandross – unfurls as last-call R&B sultriness.

The album ends, as the pair’s sets typically do, with a gospel-tinged “You Are My Sunshine;” it would be accurate to say it closes the proceedings on a celebratory note if everything preceding it hadn’t carried the same buoyant spirit. “Houston always tells me, ‘Joe, keep in mind that the people who come to see you are spending their hard earned money to be entertained,’” Alterman says. “Our goal with Brisket for Breakfast was to make sure that you can tell that we were smiling while we were playing.”