Boasting a warm, finely burnished tone and a robust melodic and harmonic imagination, Eric Alexander brings a seasoned veteran's proficiency and poise to his performances and recordings. A fixture at the venerable New York jazz nightclub Smoke, Alexander has released nearly a score of albums and appeared on recordings by numerous artists, including Cecil Payne, Irene Reid, Jim Rotondi, Little Jimmy Scott, Pat Martino, and Randy Johnston. In the early 1990s Alexander threw himself into the whirlwind life of a professional jazz musician. He played with organ trios on the South Side of Chicago, made his recording debut in 1991 with Charles Earland, and cut his first album as leader in 1992 (Straight Up). Alexander returns to the Stanford Jazz Festival for an evening of energetic straight-ahead jazz with longtime bandmates Harold Mabern and Joe Farnsworth, and the great Detroit bassist Rodney Whitaker.