Down By the Sea

Some of the best jam together at the Red Sea Jazz Festival.

By JEFF MESHEL
Eilat concert 311 (photo credit: DAVID RUBIN)
Eilat concert 311
(photo credit: DAVID RUBIN)
EILAT IS THE QUINTESSENTIAL spot in Israel for escapism. Stark and breathtaking pink hills envelop its sparkling blue sea. Sunbathing, scuba diving, swimming with dolphins, beer and sea food compete with the chance to sleep late in truly luxurious hotels. Extraterritorial in body and mind, Eilat seems so far across the desert that many visitors fly down rather than make the 4-hour drive from Tel Aviv.
But why would so many thousands of families, couples, and gaggles of teenagers flock to the hottest place in the country during the hottest week of the year?
To listen to jazz. Some of the best jazz that can be heard anywhere.
For the 24th year, the Red Sea Jazz Festival (RSJF), a four-night jazz experience, took place in the last week of August. Four nights of withering heat came at the tail of what may have been the hottest two weeks in Israel since Joshua crossed the Jordan (or at least in modern Israeli history). But it seems that with enough water, beer, ice cream, good spirits and bonhomie, surrounded by cranes, containers and ships, Israelis can transcend the temperatures that were hovering around 35 degrees Celsius at 1 a.m. To the lights flickering on the Red Sea and the light of a stunning full moon above, add the final great ingredient – the music – and some 8,000 happy people enjoy eight hours of great music for each night, all night.
A smart mix of local talent spiced with top foreign artists, the Red Sea Jazz Festival offers up a heady mix of reverie, energy, groove, brain-tickling and thought-provoking music. This year, the variety of styles was wide enough to satisfy every taste – Nikki Yanofsky, the Montreal wunderkind, awing even the most jaded listeners with her irrepressible 16 year-old ebullience and class; Hermeto Pascoal, the legendary Brazilian weaver of wonders, leading a fun band in a musical rite of enchantment; Rickie Lee Jones in an intimate, reflective set, deeply touching the more mature listeners; Musica Nuda, an Italian bassist/songstress duo, wowing the crowd with their intense, Brechtian theatricality. There were also plenty of opportunities for the younger and the more energetic crowd to get up and dance, such as those provided by the trio of Israeli/New Yorker Oz Noy or local rock star Barry Sakharov collaborating with jazz drummer Rea Mochiach.
There’s always a tension at jazz festivals between the purists and commercial concerns. The big-name-big-draw artists tend to come from the world of rock. As Attorney Yori Gairon, chairman of the “Friends of the Festival,” points out at the pre-festival press conference, “A jazz festival has to include at least 70 percent jazz to justify its name, but all the big festivals have more and more rock artists. After all, you have to get people there in order to expose them to good jazz.”
Indeed, participants would typically remark, “I’m not really a jazz fan, but the music here is great; maybe I’ll start following it.” And remarkably, among the biggest hits of the event were young Israeli pure jazzists – Ofer Ganor, Ilan Salem, Shem Tov Levi, and especially, the very talented Omri Mor.
ONCE A YEAR, EILAT’S PORT moves the towering freight containers aside to make room for the festival. Nestled at the seaside, three large stage areas are erected (seating 1,000, 2,000, and 4,000) walled by containers. Surrounding the large central plaza are food and drink stands, peddlers, luxury car displays – even a designer port-a-john exhibit advertising toilet paper, complete with high-tech air conditioning and plasma screens in the stalls.
It’s the most laid-back scene imaginable in a country where life is unremittingly intense. Upscale couples sipping wine mix with families munching pizzas, two women friends licking ice cream, a couple of jazz buffs scrutinizing the program, townies ogling the international ambiance. Some are first-timers, while many are returning regulars who schedule the event as part of their annual vacation.
The non-jazz aficionados make up a large part of the audience. It’s a festival after all, with a festive atmosphere – eight shows a night (in four time slots) for four nights; there are 20 acts (half Israeli, half international), from eight in the evening till 2:30 in the morning – all followed by a jam session at a nearby hotel. And the real fanatics can be found in the afternoon at the well-attended master classes.
Conspicuous at the festival were the many contingents of 30-year-olds, 22-year-olds and even teenagers who came for the music. One group of 10 high-school boys, most of them wearing knitted kipot with tzitzit on top of their T-shirts, sort of national-Orthodox hippies, and not your usual jazz festival audience, were pleasantly raucous, shouting in chorus that they’re jazz groupies who travel around the country to see their favorite artists. No teenage nihilism here, just genuine enthusiasm and a little well-placed noise.
It’s 5:30 in the morning. We’re sitting around the pool at the Yam Suf Isrotel Hotel sipping on our ice-cold beers, staving off the withering heat. There are hundreds and hundreds of us, jazz fanatics and lay fans of all ages, listening to the late-night (early morning) jam sessions, young Israeli jazz wannabes, famous Israeli musicians, and international stars, all improvising together on the same stage. Between sets, we ask the teenager sitting next to us with his girlfriend what brings them here at this hour.
“My parents have been coming here for eight or nine years,” says Tal Mashiach, 17, from Moshav Harashim. “My father’s a big jazz fan, and my mother really enjoys the atmosphere. This is my fifth time. I’m now studying jazz bass very seriously, playing with friends, composing. I’m hoping to make a career out of it. I guess I caught the bug at the festival.” His parents, he notes dryly, have been long asleep in their hotel.
What is it with these young Israelis and jazz, a genre usually appealing to adults? “Nowhere in the world is there a concentration of talented young jazz performers like there is in Israel today – not in Europe, not in America. Not even in New York,” attests Avishai Cohen, artistic director of the festival. The jazz scene in Israel today is reminiscent, says Cohen, of the glory days of the “Kosher Nostra,” the nickname given the group of musicians who dominated the classical world in the 1960s and 1970s. They were led by Israeli-bred Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman, and Pinchas Zukerman, Jacqueline du Pré and honorary member of the tribe, Zubin Mehta. The large number of Israeli jazz players who succeed in New York, together with the plethora of fine young musicians in Israel – and the clearly supportive audience – are proof of the health of the local jazz scene.
Avishai Cohen himself is Israel’s bestknown and most highly-regarded jazz musician. He moved to New York from Israel as a young man, almost 20 years ago, as there was virtually no jazz scene in Israel back then. He became a star there, first as a member of Chick Corea’s group, then forming his own very successful trio. He now divides his time between touring internationally with his group, recording, and serving as the artistic director of the RSJF, now for the second year.
Six years ago, Cohen moved his base from New York back to Israel, a move virtually incomprehensible for an Israeli in the entertainment business, relocating from The Big Apple back to the boondocks. “He doesn’t need to prove himself anymore. He tours half the year, so it doesn’t matter where his base is,” comments Gilad Abro, the rising young Israeli bassist of the Omri Mor trio.
Cohen’s presence in Israel has clearly galvanized the local jazz scene. Musically, he’s had a profound influence on the young locals. “He’s like Miles Davis,” Abro tells The Report, and speaks about the great impact Cohen has had on him with awe tempered by easy familiarity. “People play differently around him. Somehow he makes you play better just by his presence.” But Cohen’s influence goes even deeper. By the fact that he chose to return to his homeland, he’s instilled in the young Israelis a sense of musical patriotism. In the past, real success in music was equivalent to ‘making it’ in New York. Avishai has made it cool to play jazz in Israel.
Cohen clearly enjoys playing in the jam sessions alongside the young Israelis and visiting musicians. Despite the commercial appeal of his name, he won’t play in the festival. “The festival can’t be about me; it’s about the entirety of the music,” he says.
TODAY, NO ONE BETTER exenplifies the kinetic energy generated on the young Israeli scene than the Omri Mor trio. Known as the Andaloujazz Project, the group played two sets at the festival. Word of mouth spreads rapidly among the audience, and while the house was full for the first set, the second set was packed to the rafters. The energy was palpable – the audience broke into spontaneous applause 20 or 30 times during one piece; twice mid-set, the artists received a standing ovation, and one of a full five minutes again at the finale!
“Yeah, it’s incredible,” Mor, almost blushing, tells The Report in a 5 a.m. pool-side interview, still glowing from the overwhelming reception the night before. “It happened when we played in France, and in Belgium. I guess the audience connects to our music.”
Jazz pianist Mor is a modest, gentle, unassuming 26-year-old Jerusalemite, with an appealing naïveté (“I still live at home, but you don’t have to write that”) that makes the interviewer want to pinch his cheek.
Mor has developed remarkable technical prowess, despite a three-year hiatus when he almost completely stopped playing due to a problem with a tendon. His style is unique and personal, informed by an eclectic range of influences. An archetypal good middle-class kid, Mor studied classical music at the university, but his jazz inspiration came from Arnie Lawrence, whom he met when he was 13. Lawrence was a saxophonist who immigrated from New York’s jazz scene to Israel in 1997; he inspired countless Israeli youngsters before his untimely death in 2005, and introduced them to the mysteries of “the real world of jazz out there.”
“I still think about things he said to me. Even though he passed away years ago, I’m still learning from him,” reflects Mor.
But Mor says that his most singular inspiration, the person who inspired his current Andaloujazz Project, is Nino Biton, a legendary figure in Jerusalem, whose name is synonymous with Andalusian music in Israel. Biton plays this traditional North African music on oud and violin, but is best known as a paytan, a cantor of Sephardi liturgical poetry. Biton has cast his spell over a cadre of young musicians fascinated by this traditional music. Recounts Mor, “I met him when I was about 14. His band needed a keyboard player to play this strange, complex ‘Andalusian’ music. I fell deeply in love with it. For years I have been going to Nino, sitting with him for hours at a time, sometimes playing music with him all night long. He never took money. He is a great teacher in the traditional Moroccan sense.”
“Eventually,” he continues, “I got the idea to use Andalusian melodies as a basis for jazz improvisation – like in the spirit of American standards.”
Mor avoids the pitfalls of crossover jazz, which usually begets music which is neither jazz, nor the style it is trying to incorporate. Mor’s respect for this North African music is great, and indeed, the music is honest, duly respectful and inspired.
The trio is a typical Israeli mixed salad. Mor’s background is Argentinean and Iraqi; bassist Gilad Abro is half South African, half Iraqi; drummer Noam David’s family originated in Spain and Iraq. Yet, as Mor notes, “No matter where your parents are from, in Israel you’re always running into Mizrahi [Israeli pop music with a high dosage of Middle Eastern influence] or Arabic music of different types. It’s all over, it’s in the air.”
All three players are well-schooled in traditional American jazz, but this project is an innovative, riveting take on the traditional music of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. “North African music is very different from other styles of Arabic music,” explains Mor. “It’s full of African polyrhythms, like 3/4 played over 4/4. The accented beat of the measure isn’t necessarily the first one, in contrast to Western or some other Arabic music. Andalusian music often has elements of Latin music as well – North Africa was ruled by Spain, after all. So Andalusian music and Cuban music are related in many ways.”
The trio has been playing together for less than a year, but has already made a sensational impact at festivals in Belgium and France. “Europe is the center of ethnic music. We have a manager in Belgium, and we’re planning on making our first CD there in a few months. Eilat was only our second really big gig in Israel. A lot of people tell me,” he smiles shyly, “that they’ve never really enjoyed listening to jazz before they heard us. Unbelievable.”
The inspiration for the Omri Mor Andaloujazz Project may be North African and they may be playing in what is ultimately an American idiom, but the mix is most decidedly Israeli. Regardless of the style they choose to play in, they are a highly-skilled, precisely honed jazz trio – what in the business is called ‘tight’.
Mor refuses to take all the credit. “The trio isn’t just about me. It’s important to give full credit to Gilad and Noam. They’re both great musicians, and play a crucial role in making our music what it is. We’re very committed to each other, both on a personal and on a musical level. We feel great together, we laugh at the same things, we cede to each other musically.”
During a passage in which drummer Noam David is featured, Mor and Abro supply a very active groove while David shows his stuff. Ordinarily, a pianist and bassist will stop playing to let the drummer solo – and even leave the stage. “I did that intentionally, I wanted the groove and the harmonies to continue. We take responsibility for each other. ‘You don’t leave the wounded in the battlefield’,” he said, resorting to a metaphor taken from the Israeli military.
Yet the Omri Mor Trio isn’t merely a trio of Israeli musicians, nor even a trio of musicians playing Israeli music. They’re an Israeli trio, playing in Hebrew. Swept up by the energy and excitement of their playing, a listener remarks, “Did you see their eyes? They never stopped communicating for a minute. They were grinning at each other and gritting their teeth in harmony and going through every passage completely together.”
Indeed, Israelis do communicate with each other in a particular way, with uncountable, almost imperceptible assumptions and presumptions, intrusive and intimate. So the fact that the music is North African-informed music doesn’t detract from its Israeliness. Yet it is clearly the language between the three that makes this an Israeli trio.
Their Semitic music goes from right to left. It thrives on what’s best about ‘Israeli’ – energetic, direct, blunt, insouciant, free of gratuitous adornment or adherence to convention, intelligent, witty, in-your-face, relentless and inescapable.
Despite the early morning hours, the scene is very much awake, because Avishai Cohen and his friends are jamming. Every few minutes a young fan approaches Gilad, tells him in over-the-top superlatives how great the set was. Abro smiles, tickled and embarrassed.
Referring to the possibility of success abroad, Abro says, “Sure, we want to prove ourselves. But we feel that this is home. We’re very proud to be Israeli. That’s how we present ourselves abroad, that’s how we feel.
“And besides,” he quips in an irreverent conclusion, “the hummus here is the best in the world. It’s hard for people to leave all that.”