A musician plays a trombone during the first day of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, Louisiana April 25, 2014.. (photo credit: JONATHAN BACHMAN/REUTERS)
The Jerusalem Jazz Festival is about to take its fifth bow at the Israel Museum, and perennial artistic director and internationally renowned trumpeter Avishai Cohen has mixed things for the December 4-6 program.
The musical offerings cover an expansive stretch of styles, genres and cultural baggage with Western chamber music, ancient tribal material, Ladino, flamenco, Irish and Appalachian folk songs, indie, pop, Maloya music from the Indian Ocean island of Reunion and West African music just some of the sources threaded through the three-day agenda alongside the jazzy stuff.
Cohen is clearly intent on providing something for all musical tastes, as he unfurls a program that, even by today’s eclectic reach of jazz festivals across the globe, dips into an impressive range of areas.
Fans of hip-hop-inflected jazz should dig the appearance by the Soweto Kinch Trio from Britain, which is said “to walk the line between jazz and spoken word.” Then there is the pairing of French keyboardist DOMi (Domitille Degalle) and American drummer JD Beck – the latter is all of 16 years old – who deconstruct and rearrange jazzy elements, fusing them with hip-hop breakbeats, overlaid with surprising harmonies and new-world melodies.
Back on the home front, drummer Amir Bressler will lead the Liquid Saloon quintet, taking in African rhythms, spacey beats and psychedelic jazz.
In recent years Israeli vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Shye Ben-Tzur has gained international stardom for his deft potpourris of Indian and Western sounds, and has mixed it with the likes of Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. For his show at the Israel Museum, he joins forces with percussionist Ben Aylon, with the duo combining traditional qawwali singing, Jewish piyut, and Sufi music to form a new sonic idiom.
Cohen’s soprano sax-playing older brother Yuval will front a sextet that features stellar cellist Maya Belsitzman, pianist Katya Tubul and drummer Yonatan Rosen in what is termed as “contemporary chamber jazz.”
Meanwhile, the artistic director will put in an appearance in one of the most intriguing slots in the three-dayer, when he plays alongside the Bohuslän Big Band from Sweden. The Scandinavian troupe should provide festival-goers looking for something a little out of ordinary with their money’s worth as the ensemble offers fresh reworkings of some of Cohen’s own charts.
And if you’ve ever wondered what the jazz scene in China is like, you can get a glimpse of that when a fivesome fronted by trumpeter Li Xiaochuan takes the Israel Museum stage.
For tickets and more information: https://www.jerusalemjazzfestival.org.il
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