Get into the groove

Trombonist Avi Lebovich is making waves in the local jazz community while earning admirers abroad.

By BARRY DAVIS
Music good 88 (photo credit: )
Music good 88
(photo credit: )
Avi Lebovich's gig at last month's Red Sea Jazz Festival was quite simply one of the best in the entire four-day program, stellar foreign acts included. The packed audience was intermittently entranced and energized as the 13-piece ensemble swung through an enticing program based on The Avi Lebovich Orchestra's new - and definitively titled - release, Groove Collage. In a way, the gig and the CD are a sort of coming of age for Lebovich. Not that the 36-year-old trombonist-composer-bandleader hasn't already accumulated an impressive resumé to date. But five years after he returned to Israel from an 11-year sojourn in New York and London, Groove Collage provides corporeal evidence of the valuable contribution he is making to the local jazz community. And you can add to that a couple of impressive official kudos - the Prime Minister's Composer's Award in 2005 and the Landau Award for Performing Arts in 2006. Lebovich says he never set out to be a mentor, although he's not exactly against the idea of helping his more junior colleagues progress. "My mission in music is not education. I don't see myself as an educator. If people get something from my story and improve from what I do, that's fine. But it's my job to play music. I have to strive to attain a higher language. I have to do that. I simply can't live without that." He is also impressed with the general standard of jazz here, and says things have advanced in leaps and bounds since he relocated to the States in 1992. "Oh yes, the jazz scene here is getting better all the time. It's much better than it was when I left for New York, and it's improved since I came back in 2003." That, it must be said, is partly thanks to Lebovich. Beside his playing and arranging abilities, he also brings a wealth of on-the-road experience and acumen to his work here and, by projection, to those who play with him and hear his music. "It may be a global village in which you can learn about things from anywhere in the world, but I believe you've got to spend time abroad to be close to all those influences. A musician always has to explore, to get the vibes from other places. For me that is the ABC of the trade." BUT LEBOVICH certainly doesn't belittle what we have to offer here. "There are so many colors and influences in Israel too. This is where I come from, so that comes into my work, too. Groove Collage has all kinds of influences in it. There's Latin and Balkan, funk and Africa, and Middle Eastern too. We worked very hard on this project and I'm very proud of what we've done." The album certainly didn't materialize overnight. "I wanted to tell a big story, to relate a central theme of my life as a musician. I wanted to wait until the work was complete. Every note had to be right. I can think about a particular note for a long time. The album is a live studio recording in a studio. I'm proud of that too." Multitudinous genres notwithstanding, Groove Collage all flows through the same nodal point. "What binds it all together is my crazy head," Lebovich says. "I find the groove is what I hear in my head. It's the groove, the pattern that I can identify with. It can come from the written music, but it must move me. It can't be abstract. I need an anchor to work around." Naturally, when working with such an adventurous spirit, it helps if you have like-minded players on hand. "All the members of the orchestra are into that, too. That's why it works so well." The day after the Red Sea Jazz Festival gig, Lebovich took the orchestra on the road for a tour of South Africa. "I met [stellar US jazz saxophonist] Joshua Redman in South Africa, and he said he was very impressed with the stuff coming from Israel. People abroad want to hear what we bring from Israel. We haven't had any support from the Foreign Ministry yet, but maybe that will happen some time. Israeli musicians have, for a long time, been getting the word out there that there are good things happening in this part of the world. Israeli jazz is on the map." The Avi Lebovich Orchestra will perform at Tel Aviv's Zappa Club on September 19 at 2 p.m.; in Jerusalem at The Lab on September 20 at 9:30 p.m.; and at Levontin 7 in Tel Aviv on September 22 at 9 p.m.