Alex Riel
Alex Riel (* September 13, 1940 in Copenhagen ) is a Danish jazz and rock drummer.
Riel began his career as a member of the house band at the jazz club Montmartre in Copenhagen, along with bassist Niels -Henning Ørsted Pedersen and Tete Montoliu or Kenny Drew on piano. They accompanied there guest musicians such as Ben Webster, Yusef Lateef, Don Byas, Donald Byrd, Don Cherry Art Farmer, Thad Jones, Stéphane Grappelli, Kenny Dorham and Dexter Gordon. In 1965 he became Danish Jazz Musician of the Year and recorded his first album, in a trio with Pedersen and Drew. 1965/6, he was a part of the Bill Evans trio on a European tour ( with Eddie Gomez on bass ).
Riel is both the traditional jazz ( two of his early idols are Sid Catlett and Zutty Singleton ) as in modern jazz at home and also played in rock groups: he was a member of the very well-known in Scandinavia band The Savage Rose ( originally with Anisette (vocals ), Anders Koppel ( elektr.Orgel ), Thomas Koppel ( piano ), Flemming Ostermann ( elektr.Gitarre ), Jens Rugsted (electric bass) ), with whom he also toured in the U.S. and in 1969 appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival ( which at that time had a rock phase ). With Palle Mikkel Borg 1967 he formed a quintet with which he in 1970 at the Montreux Jazz Festival won the first prize and occurred in the same year at the Newport Festival. With Mikkel Borg, he led in the 1970s, a jazz-fusion group V 8 also worked in the 1970s and 1980s with the locally very successful Danish rock singer and composer Sebastian.
He took numerous records as a sideman, among others, with Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Gary Burton, John Scofield, Jackie McLean, Bob Brookmeyer, Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Archie Shepp, Michel Petrucciani, Chet Baker, Oscar Peterson, but also under his own name, including with Michael Brecker, Eddie Gomez ( on the album Unriel ), Jerry Bergonzi, Mike Stern, Kenny Werner, Sweets Edison as sidemen. More recently, he played in projects with the NDR Bigband together with Abdullah Ibrahim, as well as with Phil Woods, Charlie Mariano, Jacky Terrasson, Pat Metheny, Didier Lockwood.
Riel played throughout his career in various trios, as with pianist Thomas Clausen. His own trio with pianist Carsten Dahl and bassist Mads Vinding won several Danish Grammys for Six hands, three minds, one heart. Riel has since 2004 with pianist Heine Hansen and Jesper Lundgaard on bass own trio (Alex Riel Trio debut album What Happened, Cowbell Music 2004 album The High and the Mighty 2007, inspired by a John Wayne movie).
His album The Riel Deal won the 1996 Danish Grammy. In 2001 he received the Danish Django d' Or ( Denmark) as Master of Jazz and in 1999 the Ben Webster Award.
The very versatile Riel ( in a small country like Denmark, probably a necessity ) known in its homeland as a star. Despite his advanced age, he is still occasionally present at festivals in other European countries, so at the Jazz Baltica 2011.