Ralph Alessi

Ralph Alessi is an American jazz trumpeter, composer and teacher, born in 1963 and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Both his parents performed at the Metropolitan Opera, and he played with the San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Opera as a teenager before studying at the California Institute of the Arts with Charlie Haden. In 2001 he founded the School for Improvisational Music in New York, and since 2013 his records as a leader have appeared on ECM. Alessi met saxophonist Ravi Coltrane at CalArts in 1986, and Coltrane has remained one of his closest partners.