Joe Alterman is a pianist, journalist, and cultural curator who has been praised by legends like Ahmad Jamal as "a very special artist," Ramsey Lewis as "an inspiration" whose playing is "a joy to behold," and Les McCann as a "bad MF.”
“When I first met my three mentors, Les McCann, Ramsey Lewis & Ahmad Jamal I was so excited to learn how to play like them. Each of their messages to me was ‘you’re never gonna play like me because we haven’t lived the same life.
But you’ve lived a cool life, so lean into that.’”
Alterman’s collaborators range wider than you might expect: he has scored several documentary films, including The Games in Black and White, co-composed with Atlanta music icon Dallas Austin, and his work appears on two Grammy Award–winning projects — President Jimmy Carter’s Last Sundays in Plains and Meditations: The Reflections of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Beyond the bandstand, Alterman is an accomplished writer, interviewer, and cultural historian. He has contributed liner notes to three albums by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and was the subject of Nat Hentoff’s final piece on music. He serves as Executive Director of Neranenah and is the host and producer of The Upside of Jazz on WABE 90.1, Atlanta’s NPR affiliate.
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