One For All

One for All ranks among the leading mainstream jazz groups to emerge during the 1990s, drawing explicit inspiration from the Blue Note-era sextet format established by Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Although the ensemble came together officially in 1997 to play a date at the Greenwich Village landmark Small’s, its core members had already crossed paths years earlier. Trumpeter Jim Rotondi, tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, and drummer Joe Farnsworth first encountered one another while working gigs around New York City in 1988; Farnsworth later brought former Jazz Messenger trombonist Steve Davis into the circle. Pianist David Hazeltine and bassist Peter Washington completed the lineup in 1996, at which point the band coalesced. Its first recording, Too Soon to Tell, appeared on Sharp Nine that same year under the billing One for All featuring Eric Alexander, a nod to the reedman’s rising profile. Later projects such as the 2003 album Wide Horizons shifted emphasis away from any individual soloist, underscoring instead the group’s collective identity.