Suite Of The East (Zamzama Records)
Omer Vital
Released April 24, 2012
NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll Best New Albums 2012
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_naFaCQLDvs_9VisyS2I9uFzzP5yXeI8gE
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/28MWmExcVKpuFZ292CBgY6?si=ux27PsWLSRWsx_jDSXDXJA
About:
Bassist Omer Avital came from Israel to New York in the early ’90s and found himself among the top tier of straight-ahead modern jazz performers. The time in the big city led him to re-investigate his roots — his parents are from the Arab-speaking world — and in 2002, he returned to Israel to study traditional music and oud. Since returning, he’s remained a monster bass player, but has also integrated his Middle Eastern musical interests into his composing. At the tail end of a residency at Small’s Jazz Club in 2006, Omer Avital brought his group into the recording studio for a one day marathon session. The goal was to capture the vibrancy of the time they’d been spending together playing live, and to play compositions that Avital had completed in New York.
Track Listing:
1. Free Forever (Omer Avital) 09:12
2. Suite of the East (Omer Avital) 10:40
3. Song for Peace (Omer Avital) 14:49
4. The Mountain Top (Omer Avital) 12:13
5. Sinai Memories (Omer Avital) 05:36
6. The Abutbuls (Omer Avital) 10:57
7. Bass Meditation (Omer Avital) 05:38
Personnel:
Avishai Cohen: trumpet
Joel Frahm: saxophone
Omer Klein: piano
Omer Avital: bass
Daniel Freedman: drums
Produced by Omer Avital
Recorded by Leon Dorsey on April 27th 2006 at Leon Dorsey’s studio
Mixed and Mastered by Michael Perez-Cisneros
Cover photo by Liat Avital Yeminy
Layout by Luke Moellman
Review:
Duke Ellington made “Far East Suite” in 1966. Omer Avital’s “Suite of the East” was recorded in 2006 but not released until now. The differences between the two albums reveal how the jazz art form evolved over 40 years.
“Far East Suite” is sophisticated orchestral American jazz with exotic colorations and subtle inflections drawn from Ellington’s exposure to Eastern cultures on a State Department tour. Avital’s album is a deep organic fusion of Middle Eastern and North African music with current cutting-edge jazz. It is not coincidental that Avital’s band contains both Israelis (the bassist-leader, trumpeter Avishai Cohen, pianist Omer Klein) and Americans (tenor saxophonist Joel Frahm, drummer Daniel Freedman). Jazz has globalized.
The title track first sounds like an ancient, wheeling folkdance. When Frahm and Cohen blast their way into it, it suddenly sounds like jazz, never mind the provocatively unfamiliar context. Avital began all seven compositions during a three-year stay in Israel and finished them in New York. Pieces like “The Mountain Top” and “Free Forever” begin with incantatory melodies and throbbing rhythmic patterns that are foreign until you feel their universal human celebration, and notice how natural they sound with jazz phrasing.
Frahm and Cohen are players who come to every project loaded with ideas. Here they are clearly inspired and energized. Frahm tears up “Free Forever” from the inside. On “The Mountain Top,” Cohen proves he is an original thinker. He thinks in flaming filigrees.
The common themes that unify this music are mostly infectious with vitality and joy, but there are pensive moments. Avital’s solo, “Bass Meditation (on the possibility for peace in the Middle East),” is a moving six-minute narrative, historical and personal. “Sinai Memories” is a lilting mysterious melody, beautifully unfolded by Klein.
Thomas Conrad (JazzTimes)
