Although he took trumpet lessons when he was about eight or nine years old, Alex MacArthur “always liked the energy of drums. I liked that you’re always playing.” So, when he got to Newton (MA) South High School, he played the drums by himself after big band rehearsals. “My parents eventually got me a drum set,” he said, “and I would be playing and listening to Art Blakey, learning the drums that way. I started in sophomore year by myself and then in senior year I was playing in the big band on drums and trumpet.”
The 22-year-old MacArthur learned about jazz mainly from his parents. “My mom had a random Duke Ellington record,” he recalled, “and my parents had other records so we would listen to jazz.” But he also developed his musical skills from his high school band director, Lisa Linde. “She’s very charismatic,” he said, “very committed to the program. She made us submit a lot of things to competitions. We got to go to New York City to play in the Mingus High School Competition.”
Linde remembers MacArthur as “an excellent music student, a hard worker who was very disciplined and motivated. I was so surprised to hear him play drums his senior year! I had no idea he had been practicing them on his own, and I immediately recruited him from the trumpet section within the jazz band to be a part of the rhythm section. He took on the most difficult piece we were playing that year and gave an excellent performance. We would not have achieved and accomplished what we did without his hard work!”
MacArthur’s first drum lessons were during his sophomore year at Princeton University. His first drum instructor was Vincent Ector, and now he’s studying with Jerome Jennings. Currently a senior, he will be playing with Small Group 1 at the Princeton Jazz Festival on Saturday, April 12.
Ector calls MacArthur “a quick study. He began studying with me without formal drum lessons. He possessed raw talent and was a delight to teach — a dedicated student catching onto the concepts of jazz drumming naturally.”
The drummers who are inspirational to MacArthur, in addition to Blakey, include Roy Haynes Tony Williams, Philly Joe Jones, and Sonny Payne. Among current drummers, his favorites are Brian Blade and Marcus Gilmore. The latter, he pointed out, “is Roy Haynes’ grandson. I saw him play with Chick Corea. He’s very innovative. He plays with two high hats — one for the front and the other for the back. Brian Blade is a little more mainstream. He’s very expressive, dynamic, with amazing phrases, a very joyous player. I have tried to emulate his style.”
Princeton’s Music Department offers a Certificate in Jazz Studies. As Rudresh Mahanthappa, Director of Jazz, explained to Jersey Jazz‘s Jay Sweet in a previous article (December 2021), “We are a music department. We are not a conservatory. What I am trying to do is provide an enriching experience for people who still want to play.” (Two Princeton students, saxophonist Isaac Yi from Leonia, NJ, and trumpeter Gabriel Chalick from Naples, FL, were NJ Jazz Society Scholarship winners in 2024).
MacArthur, a senior history major, plans to continue his history studies in graduate school. “I won’t be a professional drummer,” he said, “but I plan to keep playing drums.”
The Festival presents four afternoon free concerts and a ticketed concert in the evening in the university’s Richardson Auditorium. Three of the afternoon concerts are played by student groups, joined by a guest professional. The final afternoon concert is a faculty septet.
The guest in MacArthur’s Small Group 1 at 3:30 p.m,. is guitarist Matt Stevens, who received a Grammy Award for co-producing and performing on Terri Lyne Carrington’s Candid album, New Standards, Vol. 1. An Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music, Stevens explained that the guest performers arrive a couple of days before the festival and practice four or five tunes with the student musicians.
The other student concerts are: Small Group X with tenor saxophonist Roxy Coss as guest performer at 1 p.m. and Small Group A featuring vibraphonist Warren Wolf at 2:15 p.m. The faculty septet includes Mahanthappa on alto saxophone, Ted Chubb on trumpet, Michelle Lordi on vocals, Miles Okazaki on guitar, Sumi Tonooka on piano, Matthew Parrish on bass, and a drummer to be announced. The evening concert at 8 p.m. presents Princeton’s Creative Large Ensemble directed by Darcy James Argue and features special guest Etienne Charles on trumpet.
Richardson Auditorium is located in Alexander Hall on the Princeton campus. For more information or to order tickets to the evening concert, log onto princeton.music.edu.
PHOTO BY ARI S. FREEDMAN