Herb Alpert at 91: 50th Album, Tour & Tijuana Brass

Herb Alpert turns 91 on March 31. He just released his 50th studio album. He is currently on tour. At what point does a musician get to slow down? Apparently not yet, and by all accounts, Alpert is fine with that.

The California-born trumpeter, who has sold an estimated 72 million records worldwide, dropped the appropriately titled album 50 in 2024. The 10-song collection was recorded in his home studio and features Alpert’s signature melodic horn work across an ambitious range of covers. He moves from Elvis Presley’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight” to a bossa nova reading of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Corcovado” to a dreamy take on the surf rock instrumental “Sleepwalk.” He also updates Duke Pearson’s hard bop classic “Jeannine” with a modern electronica touch. The album reflects a musician who is still chasing feeling rather than commercial validation.

“It’s a joy to be able to make music,” Alpert said. “To tell you the truth, I make music for myself. I have to do it for myself.”

That spirit carries into his current tour, where Alpert is on the road with his wife Lani Hall, the former vocalist with Sergio Mendes’ Brasil ‘66. The two celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last year, giving the number 50 a weight that goes well beyond a record count. The tour brings them to the Tilles Center on Long Island, and it arrives with a surprise twist for longtime fans. Alpert is revisiting the Tijuana Brass catalog, material he recorded during the most commercially successful stretch of his career.

He did not plan it that way. His nephew, who serves as one of his managers, pushed him to reconsider.

“I told him that was the past. I already did that,” Alpert said of the Tijuana Brass material. “But he said so many people would like to hear it and it’s a time when people could use some positive music. I told him I’d think about it.”

He thought about it. Then he pulled out Whipped Cream and Other Delights, along with What Now My Love and other recordings, and sat down to listen.

“I was smiling when I finished,” Alpert said. “It made me feel good. I said, ‘Man, I’m going to do this.’ This is the gift from me to the people that changed my life because of their appreciation of my music. I’ve got some goosebumps just listening to that music and I’m going to put it out there for people to experience.”

Songs like “The Lonely Bull” and “Spanish Flea” made Alpert a household name. His career stretches back to 1958, when he recorded a single called “The Trial” credited to Herb B. Lou and the Legal Eagles, a collaboration with Lou Adler. Since then he has accumulated Rock and Roll Hall of Fame honors and multi-platinum sales across six decades. He has also spent nearly 50 years as a sculptor, another creative pursuit that mirrors his restless approach to artistic life.

At 90 years old, turning 91 this spring, Alpert occupies a rare space. He is a legacy artist with enough catalog to fill a career retrospective, yet he keeps generating new work. 50 is not a nostalgia project. It is a present-tense statement from someone who still finds genuine pleasure in the process of making music.

Long Island audiences at the Tilles Center will get both sides of that story. The show draws from the Tijuana Brass era, the music that first connected Alpert to a mass audience, while his larger body of work sits in the background as proof that those early hits were never the whole picture.

For a musician who initially resisted looking backward, Alpert landed on a clear reason to do so. He called it a gift to the fans who supported him, and a gift to himself. That framing says something about where he is after more than six decades in music. The nostalgia is not an obligation. It is a choice, made because the music still produces goosebumps.