"Witty, wierd, bolshie and beautiful, this is a great album". Time Out
"A potently expressive musical angle on the world we live in". Jazzwise
"it's a taste well worth acquiring because you realise what a profound, moving experience Atzmon's lone voice raised in protest has been". The Observer
"...the work of an independent and unruly spirit still in turbulent evolution". The Guardian
"This album feels like a spell in a nightclub at the edge of oblivion". Evening Standard
"Atzmon is essentially a jazz man, and everything emanates from his moodily lyrical playing-with the most telling moments those closest to home". The Daily Telegraph
"His flow of ideas and coherent marshalling of them makes for solos that are as exhilarating as they are impassioned". The Herald
"...fantastiK" Sunday Tribune
Time Out
John Lewis
22.09.04
'Rearranging the 20th Century. Depsite being able to emulate his US sax
heroes (Rollins, Kirk. Parker) better than most, dissident Israeli saxophonist
Atzmon creates a distinctly European voice, mangling together Neapolitan
accordion song, tango and Balkan folk. This has less of the intense Coltrane-ish
edge of his previous outings, instead settling on a brooding, Weimar cabaret
feel. Atzmon was a key presence on Robert Wyatt's Mercury -nominated 'Cuckooland',
and here Wyatt returns the favour, his deadpan voice reading out a suitably
Rushdie-esque narrative over a montage of war-time standards. Witty, wierd,
bolshie and beautiful, this is a great album.'
Gilad Atzmon and The Orient House Ensemble: MusiK: Rearranging the 20th Century
Stuart
Nicholson on the Israeli saxophonist with a moving take on the Iraq conflict
Stuart Nicholson
Sunday October 17, 2004
I don't know about you, but at the moment there's a long list of things that are pissing me off in the world today. And considering art is supposed to be a reflection of life, when you look at the extraordinary things that are being enacted in the name of justice, liberty and democracy in the Middle East and Iraq, it seems incredible that these issues are not reflected in music. Where are today's 'Eve of Destruction', 'Give Peace a Chance' or 'Ohio'? Or the jazz equivalents of 'Fables of Faubus', 'Alabama' or 'Attica Blues'?
In the past, pop and jazz had the power to communicate political meanings within contemporary society, yet where are the songs that reflect this today? Some might argue, with some justification, that since the dissemination of the music is mainly in the hands of four corporations who are only interested in creating a placid emporium where nothing is allowed to get in the way of rampant consumerism, there's fat chance of anything disturbing that.
Which is where Israeli saxophonist/ philosopher Gilad Atzmon comes in. MusiK ... laments the fact that pop, once founded in spontaneity and self-expression, has ended up at the core of an ever more standardised world. He rails against how pop is now globalisation's most useful prop in projecting a specific set of values: conspicuous consumption, the primacy of the English language and the implicit acknowledgement that America is best. And he complains about the Middle Eastern conflict.
Raised a secular Jew, he was shocked during his period of national service at the treatment meted out to the Palestinians. Moving to London, he became a passionate campaigner for the Palestinian right of return. Drawing strength by reflecting the plight of the Palestinian people, everything on MusiK ... is inspired by pain and passion. Mixing jazz and Jewish and Arabic folk-like influences, Atzmon weaves his powerful jazz saxophone-playing - either alto or soprano sax - into a highly personal music that draws Western and Middle Eastern musical cultures together in a distinctive and highly personal folkloric-y fusion of his own. For instance, on 'Joven, Hermosa y Triste' his soprano locks in passionate counterpoint with Guillermo Rozenthuler's vocal - an engaging mixture of singspiel and melody.
Since his music is often underpinned by allegory and metaphor, 'Liberating the American People' opens with a diatonic Middle Eastern theme that moves into a Frank Harrison piano solo backed by Asaf Sirkis's masterly drumming. As Atzmon enters on soprano sax, the piece becomes a lament that attempts to liberate the American people through truths passionately exposed. A medley of 20th-century songs in an ironic reflection on mankind's most violent century becomes 'Rearranging the 20th Century', while 'Lili Marlene' begins as a seraphic lament, then reflects on how the universal emotions shared by all mankind can be undermined by ethnicity and religion.
Maybe all this might seem a bit of an acquired taste, but it's a taste well worth acquiring because afterwards you realise what a profound, moving experience Atzmon's lone voice raised in protest has been.
Burn it: 'Re-Arranging the 20th Century'; 'Joven, Hermosa y Triste'; 'Lili Marlene'
World
Gilad Atzmon
MusiK-Re-arranging the 20th century
Enja
October 9th 2004
Saxophonist, novelist and sometime member of Ian Dury’s Blockhead, Gilad Atzmon imbues his music with a sense of history-but less through his lyrics than via the sheer wit and ebullience of his playing. A fierce critic of his native Israel Atzmon spent some years exploring his oriental heritage, working with exiled Palestinian and Balkan musicians. But this new album’s dark humour feels very European-despite the fact it was conceived in Beunos Aires.
Young Argentinean singer Guillermo Rozenthler croons Joven, Hermosa
Y Triste in near salsa fashion, while the extraordinarily nimble
ensemble work darts between wailing Near Eastern sounds, madcap, Klezmer
and strident tango. Yet there is no sense of modish ethnic eclecticism.
Atzmon is essentially a jazz man, and everything emanates from his moodily
lyrical playing-with the most telling moments those closest to home. Robert
Wyatt narrates an eight-minutes sprint through 20th-century culture that
manages to make Roll Out the Barrel sound sinister while a wistful
Turkish style reading of Lily Marleen encapsulate the plight
of the exiled musician with a poignancy well beyond mere words
Mark Hudson
Jazz
With anger in his soul
Stuart Nicholson
Sunday March 13, 2005
The Observer
Gilad Atzmon and the Orient House Ensemble, Pizza Express Jazz Club, London W1, 9-12 March
Gilad Atzmon is not your run-of-the-mill jazz musician. Raised a secular Jew in Israel, he has a PhD in philosophy and a masters in music but his experiences as a stretcher-bearer during national service in the Israeli army brought home to him the largely unreported violence routinely wreaked on the Palestinian people. He now calls himself a political artist, and through his music, and latterly his rambunctious prose, he makes his frustration with Zionism known.
This has made him about as popular as Tony Blair is to old Labour in his homeland, and since moving to London, he has built a formidable reputation across Europe as a jazz saxophonist, playing with everyone from the late Ian Dury to Paul McCartney. Launching his second novel, My One and Only Love ( Saqi £9.99), a biting satire on Jewish identity, Zionist politics and sex, he opened with music from his current album, musiK, that rails against the homogenisation of music and the Middle East conflict.
Protest gives Atzmon's music its power and passion: 'Joven, Hermosa Y Triste' was an original lament, 'Surfing' dovetailed reverie and abstraction in a swipe at the NHS, while 'Liberating the American People' attempted just that through music.
But it was the searing intensity of 'Rearranging the 20th Century' that showed this remarkable man and his brilliantly conceived ensemble are now well and truly a world-class act.
Gilad Atzmon, Musik - Rearranging the 20th Century
(Enja)
John Fordham
Friday October 8, 2004
The Guardian 
With last year's Exile album, expatriate Israeli reed virtuoso Gilad Atzmon
cemented his reputation as a dominant figure in European and Middle Eastern-influenced
world-music. The disc was an evocative flight across the music of Palestine,
Romania, Israel, Britain and Italy, with American jazz still powering
its engine. It also featured the spine-tingling sound of the Palestinian
singer Reem Kelani.
This set similarly draws on many cultures, and is fired by Atzmon's campaigning
urge to resist the globalisation of musical taste. Kelani is absent, but
Argentinian singer Guillermo Rozenthuler opens a different window on Latin-American
sounds for Atzmon, and Robert Wyatt makes a memorable guest appearance
to furnish an idiosyncratic link to jazz in explaining how the devil got
the best tunes: "In the beginning there was the bird and the bird
was bop/ That's bebop, short for Beelzebop."
Rozenthuler's sad-cafe song draws you into something like
an Almodóvar soundtrack, bursts of frantic tango open with Atzmon
in wedding-party mood, but turning ever more Coltrane-like on soprano.
Forlornly romantic slow dances against sighing string ensembles are elbowed
aside by diversions into Roll Out the Barrel (full of cop-siren sounds
from Atzmon's sax, and roaring abstract street-noise), Mac the Knife,
a collective New Orleans-like jam, slow and spookily atmospheric clarinet
against reverberating low drones, and a whooping account of Lili Marlene
against edgily metronomic drums. Jumpier, a little more indulgent of Atzmon's
literary side, and a little less resolved in shape than Exile, but the
work of an independent and unruly spirit still in turbulent evolution.
Evening Standard
CD Of The Week
World
Gilad Atzmon
Re-Arranging the 20th Century
Simon Broughton
Friday, 29 October 2004
Atzmon is a Chameleon of a musician. His Latest album,
Exile, was a powerful musing on the situation in Palestine with Vocalist
Reem Kelani. Here the Israeli saxophonist and exile ranges far wider with
his Orient House Ensemble.
The opener, Joven, Hermosa Y Triste, has all the nocturnal sensuality
of an Argentine tango. With singer Guillermo Rozenthuler, which is further
developed in Tutu Tango. But the dark, seductive tone spills into other
songs, notably the title track, which is interrupted by several familiar
20th century themes- Roll out the Barrel and Mack the Knife-after an introductory
poem by Robert Wyatt. Most interesting is the Arabic and Jewish Klezmer
tinged version of Lily Marlene, a song famed for bridging both sides in
war. With its sax, piano and accordion nostalgia, this album feels like
a spell in a nightclub at the edge of oblivion.
Oxford Times
The Fairway Inn
Carswell
Friday February 25
Attending a gig to see Gilad Atzmon and the Orient House Ensemble is exceptional
value for money. Not only do you get the septet, but you also get four
sides of Atzmon.
Atzmon, the entertainer and bandleader is a tall figure, at first glance
dominant, authoritarian. His almost threatening demeanour as he walks
on to perform is instantly dismissed by a wry smile and a wry comment.
He playfully banters with the audience and the band and brings one to
the other. And then we're off, into a number that has enough flavours
to fill a musical spice rack. Ensemble is a good term for this band. They
play well together; they sound wonderful and they may hide their lights
under a bushel it is fortunately small enough to see more than the odd
glimmer. The Ensemble is Frank Harrison, Asef Sirkis, Dumitru Ovidiu Fratila,
Romano Viazzani, Guillermo Rozenthuler and Richard Price who very successfully
stood in on bass.
Atzmon the musician is the core. If his fingers fly over the keys of his
saxophone, and blur over the clarinet. His solos take from his (international)
musical heritage, from Coltrane et al, dissecting portions of standards
and rebuilding them in new, passionate, ways. Often they appear just as
fleeting references, certainly not as stylised implants. He plucks the
references whilst driving past and then perhaps round the block again
to grab another bit and then he puts them together - if he wishes.
Atzmon the author tells of his new book. My One and Only Love, a novel,
is to be released later this month. His books sell well.
Atzmon the political figure defiantly stands in a bar in a golf club in
Oxfordshire and bluntly reminds us of the role played by the United States
and the UK in the Middle East. There is a nervous mirth. There is an edge.
One that reminds us that jazz, improvised music, is expression, is making
a statement. The politics also comes through in the reworking of songs
like Mack the Knife: an interesting juxtaposition of content and Weimar
Republic cabaret. More than meets the ear here, ladies and gentlemen:
layers of statement upon layers of statement. Four people went home at
the interval.
Most stayed. Intelligent, entertaining and great music.
(c)Richard Hollingum 2005
Jazzwise
October Issue
Selwyn Harris
Gilad Atzmon and
the Orient Ensemble
MusiK – Rearranging the 20th century
Enja TIP-888848 2 | **** (excellent)
Atzmon (s, cl, sol, tbn, shabbaabeh flt, pic); Frank Harrison (p); Yaron
Stavi (b); Asaf Sirkis (d); Romano Viazzani (acc); Dumitri Ovidiu Fratila
(vn); plus special guests Robert Wyatt (vcl, tpt); Guillermo Rozenthuler
(vcl); Matthaios Tsahourides (Pontic Lyra, Greek Bouzouki); Tali Atzmon
(vcl). Rec. 2004
Over the past few years, Atzmon's albums have progressively inched further
away from post-bebop jazz and fanned out into an unselfconscious array
of multi-cultural alliances. The new CD’s typical of this evolution.
It’s the follow up to the deserved 2003 BBC Jazz awards ‘people's’
Best Album of 2003 Exile, with its Middle Eastern-dominated soundscape.
It’s a hard act to follow and on first listen Musik comes across
as just some kind of worthy appendage to it. Listen closer though and
fresh voices become apparent. In comes the Argentinian singer, Guillermo
Rozenthuler, who dazzled Atzmon at WOMAD, and though featured on just
one track, the tango influence is evident elsewhere. The rhythmically
robust jazz nucleus still know how to loosen things up, while Romanian
violinist Fratila and Italian accordionist Viazzani have become integral
team players, soaking everything with the richly haunting flavours of
the Balkans and Mediterranean.
On the title track, Atzmon continues to cunningly add both irony and fresh
substance to his medley for the 20th Century, this time featuring a devilish
spoken word contribution from Robert Wyatt. Meanwhile mainly on soprano
sax, he whips up his easternised bop rhapsodies and yearning climaxes
with the usual lyrical fervour. Perhaps sounding as close to such diverse
figures as Rota, Brecht and Piazzola than to Coltrane, there won’t
be enough jazz on MusiK to satisfy some. More importantly though this
is a rare thing: a potently expressive musical angle on the world we live
in.
Jazzwise talks to Gilad Atzmon about his album
What do you mean when you say you want to rearrange the 20th Century?
G: Aha, you go for the deep shit first. Basically I’m very enthusiastic about revisionism. I have called the album MusiK rather than Music. For me music with a ‘c’ is Anglo-Saxon cultural industry, the music business, while musiK with ‘k’ is continental understanding, the German understanding of music with that search for aesthetic pleasure, for beauty. The moment where music pushed humanity forward, maybe it was Bach, it presented the larger scope of human creation sublimely.
What draws you to Argentinian Tango?
G: I have loved tango for 20 years. Last May I went to Argentina to launch my book. And I was listening to these old guys playing tango. Obviously the Argentinian currency collapsed so they are very poor and you go to these so called third world places and there’s a huge amount of passion, emotion, and excitement in the music. So when I’m listening to tango everything’s there – passion, panic and love and hate and anger and… body fluid.
Your last album was centred on the Palestinian political issue whereas this one responds to a number of political themes.
G: I think that in general the suffering of the Palestinian
people and now the Iraqi or the American people is much the same issue.
We’re battling against major forces. In my gigs I call them the
BBS (Bush Blair Sharon) but basically it’s far bigger than the BBS
– the BBS are just a servant of the
capital forces. For me Arab resistance is liberation forces. And Blair
will find his place in history as one of the greatest evils. Who is going
to liberate us? This is the main question. Bush is basically an illiterate
imbecile.
How did the Robert Wyatt collaboration come about?
G: I recorded on his album, and Robert approached me about two years ago at a festival. His wife approached me. 'My husband wants to talk to you but he’s very shy'. And then a man came in a wheelchair and said ‘listen I’m an amateur musician I record albums from time to time and I would really like to do something if you don’t mind’ And then he gave me his card. The guy’s a genius. I want to live in the planet of Robert Wyatt.
Sunday Tribune
Gilad Atzmon and the Orient House Ensemble
MusiK/ Re-arranging the 20th Century
Enja
24.10.04
Political firebrand and ex-Blockhead Atzmon is uncompromising
in most things, not least his views on modern music: “it was a pretty
gloomy day when I realised that music wasn’t aiming towards beauty…”
His response is MusiK, the ‘K’ signifying his rejection of
modern commercial music. It would all be just so much hot air if Atzmon
were not a consummate musician, composer and bandleader. Which he undoubtedly
is. FantastiK.
Music Reviews
Gilad Atzmon Orient House Ensemble, Henry's Jazz
Cellar
ROB ADAMS October 15 2004
Edinburgh
Jazz and politics are by no means strange bedfellows. The
American civil rights struggles of the 1960s found eloquent expression
through musicians such as the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Saxophonist Gilad
Atzmon's cause celebre is the Palestinians' battle to retain their territory,
and he speaks and plays passionately on their behalf.
The earnestness of his beliefs doesn't preclude humour, though. The sharks
that bite in Mack the Knife, one of several popular milestones that vocalist
Guillermo Rozenthuler referenced in Re-Arranging the 20th Century, turn
out to be Messrs Bush, Blair and Sharon (aka "the circumcised hippopotamus").
Later, a freely improvised duet between Atzmon and pianist Frank Harrison
is revealed as an arts council grant application. Atzmon's most obvious
source of musical inspiration, particularly in this quintet edition of
his Orient House Ensemble (his accordionist and violinist being absent)
was more spiritual than political: John Coltrane's classic quartet. On
the deeply ironic Liberation of the American People, following a superbly
structured and emotional solo by Harrison, Atzmon even obliged by emphasising
the "Coltrane with a dash of klezmer" flavouring with a quote
from Coltrane's A Love Supreme.
Atzmon has the virtuosic chops to make such comparisons reasonable. His
flow of ideas and coherent marshalling of them makes for solos that are
as exhilarating as they are impassioned. Like Coltrane's great band, Atzmon's
team moves and breathes with a common purpose and a flowing range of dynamics.
With Rozenthuler adding vocal mischief and wordless counterpoints to Atzmon's
soprano, alto and clarinet lines, it's music with punch and a great groove
as well as conviction. Atzmon's targets would do well, even just from
a musical perspective, to lend an ear.
Huddersfield Daily
Triumphant Tangos
Oct 11 2004
THOSE wistful Argentinian tangos by Astor Piazzola are very popular at
the moment – too popular, maybe. Radio 3 frequently plays them as
anodyne
time fillers.
Gilad Atzmon's band Orient House has lately adopted an
Argentinian
hue, with violin, accordion, and a genuine soulful Argentinian vocalist.
But
anodyne they definitely are not.
Israeli-born Atzmon pulls no punches as far as his politics
are
concerned. He is no fan of Bush, Blair or Sharon, or the posturings of
world
politicians in general.
His compositions reflect his oppositional stance unequivocally.
But
there is humour in everything he does, and in the end it is making music
which counts.
In a jazz world that has become too polite, it is good
to experience
something as intense as Atzmon's blistering saxophone solos at full pelt.
At
last, someone who aspires to go one step beyond.
But the fire and brimstone of Atzmon's music is contrasted
with
poetic, nostalgic interludes, where the melancholic tone and long melodic
lines of the tango meet the world of traditional Balkan and Arabic music.
The brilliant musicians in Atzmon's band are as hybrid
as the music
they play, including a British pianist, Italian accordionist, and Romanian
violinist.
You would have to stand at the musical bus stop a long
time for
something else as red hot as this to come along.
FLY
Europe: City Guides/Events
http://www.fly.co.uk/fly/archives/2004/11/london_jazz_festival_gilad_atzmon_and_the_orient_house_ensemble.html
London Jazz Festival - Gilad Atzmon and the Orient House Ensemble
“We hope to see you all again before we get arrested…”
commented the charismatic and controversial saxophonist Gilad Atzmon.
A true modern great in the everchanging world of jazz.
His trademark mix of bebop, humour and politics exploded on to the South
Bank for the prestigious London Jazz Festival, coinciding neatly with
the launch of his new album, Musik.
Spiked with the usual Jewish, Balkan and Arabic influences, there was a certain haunting darkness to the music tonight, possibly due to the addition of nostalgic, aching sounds from the accordion and violin, (ghostly French fairgrounds kept springing to mind…shiver!), not to mention the accompaniment of brooding, evocative imagery projected onto the back of the stage, thanks to innovative video artists Yeast.
The compelling ‘Liberating the American People’ edged into hard bop, still with a strong Arabic flavour, with Atzmon on fire in a jawdropping saxophone solo, only to saunter off nonchalantly, lean on a speaker at the side of the stage and observe his accomplished band, including the hugely watchable and creative Asaf Sirkis on drums, and intensely sensitive pianist Frank Harrison.
The multi-faceted ‘Rearranging the 20th Century’ was dedicated by Atzmon to the late Yasser Arafat, who he referred to as a ‘great freedom fighter’. This number features a chaotic version of ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, and a beautifully sardonic ‘Mack the Knife’: with hints of Acker Bilk and a wry, sinister twist to the lyrics, pointing a powerful finger at Bush, Blair and Sharon.
Now more than ever, The Orient House Ensemble has proved to be a band of noted political significance, producing thought-provoking music with a strong, blatant social slant, but so vibrant and melodic, that I had to restrain myself from grabbing the journo next to me and engaging in some wild dancing.
As well as some intensely beautiful work from new album Musik, we were also treated to a selection from the previous album Exile, featuring flickers of Argentine Tango and the ever-present Atzmon humour. The inventive use of sound was striking, the double bass at times morphed into a groaning, anguished human being, the accordion accurately mimicked the cold sound of a life support machine.
Gilad’s colossal talent when it comes to the saxophone is well documented, but it’s his searing, heartbreaking clarinet that makes me want to fall over with ecstacy. (Again, I’m happy to say I restrained myself…)
Gilad Atzmon and The Orient House Ensemble, at once dark and incandescent, are stronger than ever, Atzmon showing a gift for bringing together the cream of international musicians. This was, in my mind, the best and most atmospheric gig I’ve seen them play so far. The future looks bright in the world of Atzmon.
http://www.gilad.co.uk
SIGLA
Gilad Atzmon & The Orient House Ensemble
featuring Robert Wyatt & Guillermo Rozenthuler
musiK - re-arranging the 20th century
Music Reviews :: :: Gilad Atzmon & The Orient House Ensemble :: featuring Robert Wyatt & Guillermo Rozenthuler :: musiK - re-arranging the 20th century Polemicist, poet, novelist and musician Gilad Atzmon has a tendency to shoot from the lip, particularly on the subject of Zionism, leaving him equally lauded by the left and reviled by the right.
Exile won Atzmon and his ensemble new fans and many awards - most notably BBC Radio 3's Best Album of the Year. The politics of that disc - the similarities, not the differences, in the dreams and hopes of Israelis and Palestinians - are moved on from here as Atzmon tackles a much wider issue, the commodification and homogenisation of modern music. In musiK's liner-notes, he writes: "It was a pretty gloomy day when I realised that popular music wasn't aiming towards beauty. Music stopped referring to itself. Aesthetics was brutally murdered in broad daylight and a shallow notion of fashion took its place. A market value was attached to every bar. Music became furniture, a matter of style, a mass global product, an extension of Levi jeans or a secondary product to Coca-Cola."
Having guested on Robert Wyatt's Mercury-nominated 'Cuckooland', Wyatt here returns the favour by guesting on musiK's sub-title track, 'Re-arranging the 20th Century', an eight-minute rollick that marvelously mixes 'Roll Out The Barrell' and 'Mac the Knife' into its tapestry of sounds. Elsewhere, the European and Middle Eastern sound that found favour on 'Exile' is here beefed with up with some Argentinian tango, while 'Lili Marleen' is as daringly different as Daniel Barenboim's attempts to get Israeli audiences to listen to Wagner.
We Say: musiK has about it a whiff of Weimar cabaret as Atzmon seeks to return some of the cultural and political power to jazz that it had in its heyday.
Tracklisting: Joven, Hermosa Y Triste - Surfing - Liberating the American
People - Tutu Tango - musiK - Re-arrranging the 20th Century - Lili Marleen
- And She is Happy
Feargal Mc Kay
November 2004
CBSO, 22.1.05 , Simon Gray
www.birmingham-alive.com
Under normal circumstances, if you went to a gig by a punk band at the
Birmingham Academy on one saturday, you might be forgiven for being
somewhat surprised the following saturday at a jazz concert in
Birmingham's CBSO Centre to recognise the saxophone player in that gig
from the one the week before.
That's normal circumstances, but anybody who knows anything about band
The Blockheads and saxophonist Gilad Atzmon knows that in this case,
normal circumstances don't apply. The styling of The Blockheads as a
punk band was always whilst in one sense technically true somewhat of
an
oversimplification - punk lyrics and attitude maybe, but always backed
by a hard jazz-funk musical soundworld. An ideal setting in fact for
Gilad Atzmon, perhaps one of the most creative musicians on the scene
currently, to have his 'other band'. But The Blockheads was the other
gig.
Atzmon's stance is intensely political, and he uses his art, be it as
a
jazz musician or as the author of two short novels and numerous essays
(readable online at www.gilad.co.uk), as the vehicle for his politics.
He was born and raised as a secular Jew in Israel in 1963, and spent 20
years witnessing the suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands
of
the Israeli government and army, eventually moving to England to further
his cause from here. Unashamedly outspoken, his book A Guide to the
Perplexed was banned in Israel within weeks of being published, and
although he strongly affirms the legitimacy and need for a Jewish state
he considers his main band The Orient House Ensemble to be just as much
a political anti-zionist vehicle as it is a jazz-world group.
Of this there was no mistake - during the course of the evening we were
treated to pieces with titles such as Rearranging the Twentieth Century
(dedicated to 'the three most horrible people in the world today - Bush,
Blair, & Sharon'), Liberating the American People, Surfing (interpreted
for us this time by Al-Jazeera as an allegory about Tony Blair's
government), and Georgina and Antonella, about two prostitutes nearing
the ends of their 'careers' down the docks. The political messages were
reinforced by the vocal poetry as part of the jazz line, ably delivered
by Argentinian Guillermo Rozenthuler. Apparently the last time the
Orient House Ensemble played in Birmingham a couple of years ago a
number of audience members walked out during the Jenine, dedicated to
all those suffering at the Palestinian refugee camp of the same name.
That piece was reserved this time for the encore, and the emotion Atzmon
feels is clearly genuine.
Pre-publicity describes the Orient House Ensemble as heavily
middle-eastern influenced, though as Atzmon himself said at the end of
the concert "we seem to be dropping the Orient from our music; but
then
if the USA gets its way there probably won't be an Orient left soon
anyway", and although there were hints of arabic scales to be heard
and
the occasional Chinoiserie as he sang down his saxophone, the overall
soundworld was more a combination of eastern European sounds with
straight-ahead contemporary jazz, though Italian Romano Viazzani's
accordian added a very French spice to the mix.
Although each piece was laden with complexity of sound, rhythm, and
dynamic range internally the overall effect was more like the whole
concert was less several discrete titles and more movements of a single
greater work, with a single overall 'something's about to happen but I'm
not sure what' sinister feel reminiscent of the German cabaret jazz of
the 20s and 30s - a feel reinforced by a short interlude based on Mack
the Knife from Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera.
Do politics and music mix? Opinion will always be divided, especially
as
for the most part people will tend to feel that politics which match
their own fit with the music they like to listen. But jazz will always
be jazz, and good jazz is the best - and Gilad Atzmon is certainly a
proponent of the best jazz, well worth hearing whenever the opportunity
arises.
simon gray,
editor
www.birmingham-alive.com
The Oxford Time
J.J.Marshall
22.09.04
Gilad Atzmon, The Spin
Never one to set his sights too low, Atzmon has subtitled his new album 'Re-arranging the Twentieth Century'. It includes several spoken songs or poems, of which the enigmatic 'Surfing' by Atzmon, is one. It starts 'She surfs my body / from the bottom of my heart to the tip of my horn and back again' but ends 'She is heavy / She scratches my insides / I am bleeding to death / And she is happy'. Ouch! An ode to love - but to woman or country?
The crux of Atzmon is pain and perplexity. As an Israeli Jew and Palestinian sympathizer, he cannot understand how a People who have suffered so much themselves, can inflict so much pain on another. The poem could be about Israel.
Atzmon calls himself a 'devoted political artist', and he liberally mixes politics and music with his band The Orient House Ensemble. But as he said, you can't be political all the time, and tonight he was guesting with Spin regulars Pete Oxley (guitar), Mark Doffman (drums) and his own bass man Yaron Stavi. Freed from politics he found expression in some glorious straight-ahead jazz.
Like a swallow circling high in the sky before departing for its African wintering grounds, Atzmon soared and dipped before peeling off from the rest of the flock to engage with his own internal journey. Song titles were irrelevant, and mostly not announced as he played alto and soprano sax (sometimes together), plus clarinet, and made each his own piece. He was as relaxed as I've ever seen him; his music was exhilarating, and it was a hugely enjoyable privilege to be there to listen.
Atzmon competes with no-one; he competes 'with boredom' - in other words with himself - and is driven by the dissatisfaction of not playing to the limit of his ability all the time. It is an itch that no amount of public applause can alleviate.
The main title of the new CD is 'Musik', which the sleeve notes tell us, is about man's intimate desires, 'his pain, hysteria, tranquility, lust, love, frustration, liberation, indifference'. It is about 'the search for oneself; about the search itself'. And like a Hopper painting, it is also of course about the artist himself.
