REFUGE ALBUM REVIEWS

RESTRAINT is not the first word to describe the politically committed Israeli saxophonist, but the fifth album by the Orient House Ensemble finds Atzmon discovering the power of understatement.

It's not muted exactly, but ballads prevail and Atzmon's imperious saxophone seems to burn brighter in a melodic setting. His volatile mood swings - switching from lament to knees-up on My Refuge - can be unsettling.

The individuality of the music is extraordinary. No one is more willing to serve his music with raw political passion, and that curious cantor-like tone on clarinet is immediately arresting, like Artie Shaw writhing in his death throes.

**** Alan Brownlee, Manchester Evening News, August 2007

'thought music could heal the wounds of the past. I may have got that wrong'

By JIM GILCHRIST

The Scotman
THE melancholy yearning which informs much of Refuge, the current album from self-exiled Israeli musician Gilad Atzmon and his Orient House Ensemble (OHE), in between some powerfully surging, all-out jazz, is what you might expect from a musician so passionately, not to mention controversially, preoccupied with the plight of the Palestinian people.
Such moments of mournful beauty include the introduction to the album's longest track, The Burning Bush, when this consummate reedsman sounds on sax as if he's blowing some plangent folk clarinet – a duduk or a zurna or such like. In contrast, Spring In New York rumbles along belligerently, Atzmon's sax squalling over jangling keyboards in a manner reminiscent of Weather Report, who, he says, were once an inspiration, while Burning Bush itself accelerates between sampled mutterings and cries into a wild and dance-like climax – Middle-Eastern bebop.

Atzmon and the Ensemble (Frank Harrison, piano, Yaron Stavi, bass and Asaf Sirkis, drums), who won a 2003 Radio 3 Best Album award for their album Rearranging the 20th Century, pick up glowing reviews for their live performances, as audiences can hear for themselves next Wednesday and Thursday, when they play Edinburgh and Aberdeen respectively. Apart from his OHE activities, Atzmon has recently been playing with and producing the emerging London jazz vocalist Sarah Gillespie, and has also played with the powerful Palestinian singer Reem Kelani (who plays the CCA, Glasgow, on Friday), while an eclectic career over the years has seen him associated with Robert Wyatt, Sinéad O'Connor and Ian Dury and the Blockheads.

Born in Israel in 1963 but living in self-imposed exile in London for the past 14 years, Atzmon, who is also an author and music educator, prefers these days to describe himself as "a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian", and if his eclectically inclusive music prompts rave reports, his stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and his intensely anti-Zionist polemic have provoked outrage, not least among some other anti-Zionists, and he has been condemned as an anti-semite and even a Holocaust denier.

Ask him about such claims and he sounds cheerfully, indeed pugilistically, unrepentant. He refutes accusations of Holocaust denial – although elsewhere he has described his attitude to that human catastrophe as "complicated", arguing that it should treated as historical fact rather that what he described as "religious myth". So far as being labelled in some quarters as a "self-hating Jew", he responds: "Self-hating Jew is almost correct. I would say a proud self-hating Jew," and continues, unabashed, "I would remind you that great thoughts have been contributed by Jews who were self-hating – Christ, or Marx, or Spinoza… whenever you come across a mega-Jewish thinker, there's always this element of anger against oneself.

"It's true that I manage to enrage quite a few political Jews," he chuckles, "and I'm not sorry that I did. At the end of the day my argument is simply that Israel defines itself with the Jewish faith. If this is the case, considering the crimes committed in the name of this faith. It is our duty to ask who are the Jews, what is Judaism and what is Jewishness?

"Let's get some things very clear. I never attack Jews, I hardly criticise Judaism – I never criticise people for their beliefs. But I can criticise conduct."

His attitude stems from his period of national service with the Israeli army during the 1982 conflict in Lebanon: "Watching my people destroying other people left a big scar. That was when I realised I was completely deluded about Zionism." Hence his condemnation of Jewishness as "very much a supremacist, racist tendency". But an anti-semite? "Considering the fact that I'm from Israel, my wife is Jewish and I have three Jews in my band, am I an anti-semite? Naaaw… that just doesn't work."

He agrees, however that he has, in effect renounced his Jewish identity, although, he adds, he grew up in a secular Jewish environment: "So I'm probably very loud and rude at times. You can take the Jew out of Israel but you cannot take Israel out of the Jew."

Discoursing further on this fraught identity, he says that most of his late work, including his music, is very "self-reflective": "When I criticise the Jews, in many cases I'm criticising myself. When I say that I'm a proud self-hater, I really mean it. But I don't have anything against Jews in particular and you won't find that in my writings."

Confused? Angry? Best return, perhaps, to his music in which, with its mercurial swerving between the poignant and the wildly impassioned, one is tempted to detect something more conciliatory. In his sleeve notes to Refuge, he states

that when he founded the OHE in 2000, he did so in the belief that music could bring people together. "I was totally convinced," he writes, "that music could heal the wounds of the past. I was sure that music was a message of peace… Eight years later, I must admit I may have got it wrong."

Music, he concludes is the message

Is he disillusioned, then? "Not really," he tells me. "I now realise that music is much too important to give to a political cause. It can serve a political cause, but it is really very effective when the listener is manipulated by it, without any intended intervention. We are playing music for the Palestinian cause, but you can feel for the Palestinian people without me telling you what you're supposed to feel."

• Gilad Atzmon and the Orient House Ensemble play the Jazz Bar, Edinburgh, on 27 February and the Blue Lamp, Aberdeen, on 28 February

The respect that Gilad attracts is no less than his due. The musical standards set by him and his peace warriors are sans pareil. This is truly music both adventurous and challenging but also accessible and inviting. And this is his band’s finest album to date and the one that best captures the spirit and vitality of their live shows. From the delightful opening ballad, ‘Autumn in Baghdad’, to the martial drumming and rich piano chords f the closer, ‘Just Another Prayer For Peace’, there’s so much to treasure here. The ensemble playing is marvellously empathic, with the balance between rhythm and soloist elegantly poised. It’s also unselfconsioulsy innovative in its marriage of bebop and middle-eastern styles and appropriately modernistic in its use of electronics and free blowing. It’s rare to find an album as consistently enjoyable whether it’s the ironic touches of ‘Spring in New York’, the Basra to Brasilia rhythms of ‘Just Another’, the big-hearted balladry of ‘In the Small Hours’ or the inspirational beauty of ‘Just Another Prayer for Peace’. With groups as tight-knit as this one, guests can seem an intrusion but Paul Jayasinha is such an intelligent, sensitive player, he gels just fine on the Middle-eastern sounding ‘The Burning Bush’ and ‘My Refuge’.

**** Duncan Heining, Jazzwise, October 2007

After the Zappa-ish satire of last year's Artie Fishel, saxophonist Gilad Atzmon has reassembled his Orient House Ensemble, with drummer Asaf Sirkis, bassist Yaron Stavi and Frank Harrison (keyboards). Atzmon is good at making albums that are more than just a bunch of tunes; each track on Refuge makes a statement, but one that's musical rather than political or social (though it's hard to resist the sentiment of the closing Just Another Prayer for Peace).

You sense that Atzmon may have taken note of younger, spikier bands, and the Orient House Ensemble has no trouble matching the energy levels of Polar Bear or Neil Cowley's trio with

angular, feisty tracks such as Spring in New York and My Refuge. Tracks such as the elegiac Autumn in Baghdad and Her Tears, where anxious electronics are woven into emotional balladry, add a troubled but optimistic humanity to an accomplished set of originals.

**** John L Walters, The Guardian, September 2007

Something of a polymath amongst the general corpus of jazz musicians, Israeli-born reed player Gilad Atzmon, London-based since 1994, is not only a prolific performer and recording artist, but also a novelist, political essayist and campaigning anti-Zionist. Atzmon's books—his most recent, My One And Only Love (Saqi Books, 2004), is a comic satire about a Jewish trumpet player who becomes ensnared in an Israeli spying operation—have been enthusiastically received on the literary pages. His fiery and outspoken political activities are more controversial.

Onstage, Atzmon and the Orient House Ensemble have a reputation for giving performances as in your face and uncompromising as Atzmon's anti-Zionism. By contrast, the band's albums—Refuge is the fifth—have tended to be more measured affairs, placing Atzmon's visceral mix of bop, free-bop, fusion, Jewish and Arabic musics in a more finely nuanced context.

Some listeners have welcomed Orient House's approach to studio albums; others have found it uninvolving. Personally, I love it. If I want to be beaten about the ears with sonic excess, I'd sooner volunteer for the experience in a club than in my own home. But what shouldn't be in dispute is the quality of Refuge, which is certainly Atzmon and Orient House's most assured recorded outing to date, and one of the most satisfying jazz albums to come out of the UK so far in 2007.

All the tunes are Atzmon originals and, as some of the titles suggest, politics continue to drive his music, though here subtly so. “Autumn In Baghdad,” a lovely, wistful ballad with an Arabic flavor, alludes to happier, less murderous times in that ancient city of culture and scholarship. “Spring In New York,” the most heated and fusionesque track, powered by a heavy electric bass ostinato, all speed and frenetic energy, is ironic in title, a bedmate perhaps of Mel Brooks' “Springtime For Hitler” in The Producers. “The Burning Bush” is overtly Middle Eastern in feel, and at just under thirteen minutes the longest track, in which Atzmon weaves first tremulous clarinet, then vibrant alto saxophone through a soundscape of distant Arabic singing and vaguely unsettling electronic effects.

Ballads dominate the album. “In The Small Hours” could have been written by Billy Strayhorn, and Atzmon's glissing alto inevitably, and gloriously, evokes Johnny Hodges. “Her Smile,” performed without drums over Yaron Stavi's bowed bass, is another gorgeous alto showcase. Stavi shines further on “Her Tears,” again playing with a bow, his instrument gently weeping. “My Refuge” sets Atzmon's delicate shabbaabeh flute against Asaf Sirkis' insistent tribal beats, played with brushes on the snare drum. The closing “Prayer For Peace” is as meditative as the title suggests.

Far from being “only” a refined version of Orient House's live performances, Refuge is, instead, a more profound expression of it, a brilliantly navigated combination of gentle, sensitive lyricism and precisely focused passion.

Chris May, All About Jazz, September 2007

A language with some very personal shapes and colours' is Gilad Atzmon's description of his band the Orient House Ensemble's approach, and anyone who's heard their live performances (and they've played regularly at the Vortex over the past couple of years) will know exactly what he means: in addition to the hard-edged yet rapturous, contemplative music centred on Atzmon's powerfully declamatory alto and the extraordinary eastern-tinged skirling sound he is also able to achieve, the OHE can transform itself at will into a funky little fusion band with Atzmon on soprano, Yaron Stavi on electric bass and the usually lyrically mellifluous Frank Harrison on multi-textured electronics and keyboards.

With the peerless drummer Asaf Sirkis sensitively propelling the band through whatever style they've chosen, the OHE is one of the most uncontrivedly versatile and unequivocally entertaining jazz units currently operating in the UK, infused as they are with their leader's musical and political passion, but never content to perform exclusively accompanying roles; all the various ingredients of their music, from snatches of spoken-word recordings and electronica to relatively straightforward muscular post-bop, are assimilated into the band sound with a natural ease and thoroughness that entirely vindicate Atzmon's claims about a personal language.

Recommended ­ but mainly as an appetiser for the band's current 30-gig UK tour, which takes them everywhere from Whitby to Hastings, and from St Ives to Chester.

Chris Parker, The Vortex, Album Review, September 2007

The saxophonist Gilad Atzmon and his Orient House Ensembles’s new CD, Refuge, is a typically wide-ranging effort. At times, Atzmon is almost mainstream in his boppish solos, at others he veers off into territories all of his own. Exciting stuff.

Roger Trapp, The Independent, September 2007

After the buffoonery of his Artie Fishel project, the great Israeli-born saxophonist returns to serious business.

And, indeed, he is in sombre mood with titles such as Autumn in Baghdad, Her Tears and Just Another Prayer for Peace. Ebullience breaks out in the giddy rhythms of Burning Bush and the Latin party on My Refuge, but those who know Atzmon’s Orient House Ensemble from the white-hot intensity and originality of their live shows may find stretches of Refuge less characterful; Spring in New York could be any number of athletic jazz-funk bands. For the full-on East-meets-West Atzmon experience, catch him on his current, epic tour.

*** John Bungey, The Times, October 2007

Listen to the music of the saxophonist Gilad Atzmon and you’re sometimes deafened by the clatter of his extra-curricular activities. There’s the left-wing polemics, the controversial anti-Zionist declarations, parody klezmer routines, and the fact that he once played a London show wearing nothing but a nappy.

None of this should detract from the fact (that) Atzmon is an astonishing musician. Born in Israel, educated in Germany, it’s fortunate for the London jazz scene he chose to settle here in 1995. He’s worked closely with two of England’s great musical eccentrics (leading The Blockheads for several years until Ian Drury’s death, and being a core member of Robert Wyatt’s band for the last two albums) but it’s his solo albums which really allow him to shine.

This charity gig – a fundraiser for Palestinians also featuring singer Sarah Gillespie, oud player Nizar Al-Issa and parody worldbeat trio Orquestra Mahatma – precedes a tour to promote Atzmon’s latest album Refuge.

Atzmon gives good blistering, Coltrane-influenced freakouts on alto or soprano sax, but here he branches out to clarinet, piccolo and shabbaabeh flute, all melded with subtle use of technology. The opening tracks – the ruminative Autumn in Baghdad and the clattering electric fusion of Spring in New York – give you some clue as to how his music is constantly evolving.

John Lewis, Metro, September 2007

Israeli multi-instrumentalist Atzmon has thankfully abandoned the clunky conceptual Klezmer of his last album. Of course, the controversies surrounding his contentious views on Zionism cast a shadow and afford a context for his musical vision, but here they’re communicated by their absence, as if music is the only real facilitator of human understanding. Instead, the album feels tranquil and meditative with Atzmon’s virtuoso sax and Frank Harrison’s McCoy Tyner-influenced piano to the fore.

Phil Harrison, Time Out, September 2007

Even allowing for his fire-breathing political views, the expat Israeli Atzmon has always been one of the most distinctive saxophonists on the British circuit. Poised between east and west, his Orient House Ensemble have avoided the arid scholasticism that bedevils so many rivals. But there’s an undeniable loss of individual colour on this shift into more urban/fusion terrain. For long stretches, they achieve the unlikely feat of resembling the other earnest technocrats on the block. Thankfully, a Moorish flavour blossoms on The Burning Bush, and the drummer Asaf Sirkis kicks life into My Refuge. Expect to hear the music taking on a more purposeful character during the group’s UK tour.

Clive Davis, The Sunday Times, September 2007

The writing, arrangements and performances are exemplary, each title easily stands on its own, but sequenced as is, produces an overwhelming effect which astounds the listener for the duration of the programme. The arrangements enable the solos to sound perfectly in keeping, but permit an intensity and spontaneity, reaching the heights to float above. At the same time the accompanying musicians always show a similar intense involvement, always playing in complete accord with the soloist.
All in all, I have found it difficult to find a "jazz" work to compare with "Refuge". I have never been overly fond of "A Love Supreme", but I am sure that a selection of Coltrane's quartet recordings of the time could be assembled to compete with "Refuge", but perhaps without the unity of purpose. Mingus' "Black Saint and the Sinner Lady" comes to mind, and dare I say Henri Texier's (V)ivre is in the listing but a fair way back......

***** David Alan Start, Customer Review, Amazon UK, October 2007

Saxophonist Gilad Atzmon is one of the treasures of the UK jazz scene, he tours the nations jazz clubs with remarkable energy, always providing a great live show and he is a promoters dream to book.

He has also clocked up an impressive catalogue of studio recordings and this latest, Refuge, is as one would expect - a very high quality album full of interest and reflection with a distinctive sound which will haunt and entertain with equal measure.

The opening tracks of Autumn in Baghdad and Spring in New York reflect the passion of the bandleader whose Middle Eastern heritage and despair at the course of history is central to his music and life

The band Orient House is as ever full of rich and unique support for the main man providing a rich and at times funky arabic influenced tapestry yet never straying too far from the jazz format.

Gilad Atzmon is a great musician, go and see him live, buy his albums and enjoy a unique talent.

***** Alan Cross, Customer Review, Amazon UK, October 2007

THIS Israeli saxophonist's fifth album with his Orient House Ensemble is a more understated affair than its predecessors, but is none the worse for a more measured approach. Gilad Atzmon has earned a reputation as an original and creative musician and composer, and that is apparent again in the eight new compositions here.

The prevailing mood of the set is reflective, a tone set in the opening Autumn in Baghdad and emphasised in ballads like In the Small Hours, the implicitly linked pairing of Her Smile and Her Tears, and the closing Just Another Prayer for Peace. It makes the effect all the more emphatic when they do cut loose on fiercer up-tempo material such as Spring in New York or The Burning Bush.

*** The Scotsman, September 2007

“Music can move people. While it is very clear that we don’t really trust our politicians, still artists – people who are looking for truth in themselves – do not have any reason to lie. I’m not talking about pop artists, I’m talking about genuine artists. I see a truth in myself. I’ve found something in myself and I share that with the public, who take it or leave it.”

So says Gilad Atzmon, a sax player, and a rather special sax player at that. He is also a controversial figure: a Jew who is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. An ex- Israeli Army man who was shocked by his own country’s handling of the war in Lebanon. He writes pamphlets on the subject, read by several million people, he writes novels and his music explores culture on a broad level. However, he also declares that he is not a political animal, he is a humanist. Articulate and intelligent, Atzmon is that most dangerous of all artists to any political system – a musician with a brain...

Imagine an album by such a man, full of energy, passion, anger, fury and frustration and all directed to his poor saxophone. Imagine Coltrane for the noughties. “When the ego, the awareness, melts down – a flood of music comes out of you,” ventures Atzmon. “This explains why so many jazz musicians have always used so many drugs over the years, to remove the boundaries. Miles and Coltrane used drugs to remove the ego. Without that ego, they could play. It burst out. I try to get there without the drugs. To develop your own sound, it is best not to be there when the music is coming out. As a writer, when you start to write you’re a bit slow – you may spend one hour on your first four sentences - and then it all comes out. You get into a muse.” Listen to this album and see how he does it because, boy, he does it well.

Hi-Fi World, December 2007

Whether in his daring saxophone style, his confrontational live performances or his controversial anti-Zionist activism, novelist/essayist/musician Gilad Atzmon has long been recognized (and sometimes vilified) for his uncompromising intensity. But on his fifth disc with the Orient House Ensemble—drummer Asaf Sirkis, bassist Yaron Stavi and keyboardist Frank Harrison—the Israeli-born, London-based saxophonist exercises a powerful dose of restraint.

That’s not entirely surprising—on each of Atzmon’s recordings, he has deliberately curtailed the fiery in-your-face nature of his concert settings. He’s simply never done so as smashingly as on this latest set of originals.

Opener “Autumn in Baghdad” and the Ellingtonian “In the Small Hours” offer up the most melodic balladry of Atzmon’s career, and the gentle “Her Smile” is a fantastic sax showcase, a duet with Stavi’s bowed bass.

In many ways, Refuge is Atzmon honing his craft, perfecting his middle-eastern inflected bop, augmenting it with free blowing and electronics at just the right moments. But Atzmon expands his instrumental, improvisational and emotional range here as well. With its haunting flute and tribal beats, the title track is an Arab-Latin fusion unlike anything else he’s assayed, and the bass-heavy “Spring in New York” makes most fusion sound weak.

The centerpiece, at nearly 13 minutes, is “The Burning Bush,” on which Atzmon doubles on alto sax and clarinet, weaving and moaning amongst a chorus of Arabic voices and an electronic soundscape. But in another world altogether is the closer, “Just Another Prayer for Peace,” which lives up to its message, integrating everything that makes Atzmon the writer, the player and the firebrand, so distinctive.

J&R Music World Snap Magazine, November 2007

The saxophonist Gilad Atzmon is part of a new wave of jazz artists creating exciting music in Britain. His new album Refuge is a tour de force – a work of beauty, subtlety and depth.

Like the musical equivalent of a magpie, Gilad collects and absorbs a wide variety of styles, out of which he fashions something fresh and unique.

Gilad is fortunate enough to work with a group of extremely talented musicians. Check out Asaf Sirkis’s wonderful polyrhythmic drumming, Yaron Stavi’s haunting bowed bass and Frank Harrison’s tender and delicate piano playing.

Politics continues to drive Atzmon’s music forward. Take the melancholic and wistful “Autumn In Baghdad” – is it a cry of despair at a city under brutal occupation? Or does it allude to a less murderous time when Baghdad was the birthplace of modern civilisation?

“The Burning Bush” uses Arabic chants, Gilad’s driving saxophone and distorted electronic effects to paint a picture of Iraq in flames.

But this is not just an album of anger and indignation. Tracks like “In The Small Hours” are joyous and life affirming ballads, while “Her Tears” is achingly painful.

If you have seen Gilad and his band in concert you would have witnessed a musician full of fire and fury. Refuge is also intricate and moving, a triumph in all respects.

Nick Taylor, Socialist Worker Online, October 2007

Israeli-born saxophonist Gilad Atzmon's stew of modern jazz discipline, expressionist bluster and Middle Eastern vernacular has rarely sounded better. His slew of recent compositions blends these elements into an organic whole, and sets up the genre-hopping improvisations that are Atzmon's trademark. And, after an extensive UK tour, his band, The Oriental House Ensemble, is on fire with intuition and purpose.

On stage, Atzmon remains the dominant figure, his full tone and unconditional passion seeming about to spin out of control - until he returns to a short, tricky melodic statement and a dead stop. Though a passionate player, he has the complex rhythmic control of a firmly rooted modernist, and his solos are full of sly references to tradition. But it is his ability to switch from the scales of the Middle East to the modal harmonies of 1960s jazz that is his trademark, as was clear from the opening brace of originals, "Autumn in Baghdad" and the clarinet-driven "The Burning Bush". In the former, descending minor chords and mallets introduced a melody that opened in New York but finished in the east; in the latter, an unaccompanied Arabic- inflected clarinet gradually introduced a Latin-tinged groove.

Elsewhere we were treated to nagging hip-hop, Ellingtonian sophisti cation and, to close each set, the merengue of "My Refuge", though these were but starting points as most numbers delivered band-member showcases. Drummer Asaf Sirkis crisply juxtaposed rhythmic flavours, Yaron Stavi on bass was rock solid, while keyboardist Frank Harrison dealt equally with acoustic jazz and electronic manipulation.

Atzmon wears his political commitment on his sleeve - song titles such as "Liberating the American People" are a bit of a giveaway - but after the first number he announced that there would be "no more political nonsense", before launching into a burst of improvised stand-up involving a half-eaten pizza crust, the Middle East peace process and sleaze. It was funny and, given the musical context, didn't seem out of place.

**** Mike Hobart, Financial Times, December 2007

This was a very special gig for Salisbury.

The Orient House Ensemble offered sympathetic support to his robust alto and soprano saxophones, swirling clarinet and assorted electronic devices, and when it got wild they knew how to cut loose.

The drummer Asaf Sirkis deserves special mention. Drum solos can often be hard work for the audience but this guy was really hot and engaged us all completely with some wonderfully inventive playing.

Jazz covers a lot of ground and opens the door to a whole raft of possibilities.

There was quite a lot of that spirit in this performance but truly this was music without frontiers.

Roger Elliott, Live Review for This is Salisbury, Huntsman Tavern, Salisbury

For a man who claims that his days as a political animal are long behind him, jazz saxophonist Gilad Atzmon shows no sign of ceasing to voice his support for the Palestinian cause.

Whether or not one agrees with his stance, there is little doubt that his phenomenal musical talent has gained him a sizeable and discerning following, and although this concert did not attract the kind of capacity audience usually seen at Taliesin's jazz events it was clear that those who had come along were determined to get the most out of the experience - as indeed they did.

The quality of the music was extraordinary, with Atzmon joining forces with keyboard wizard Frank Harrison, bassist Yaron Stavi and drummer Asaf Sirkis to produce a wall of sound which blew the audience away, so powerful was its texture and bubbling rhythms.

With titles such as Autumn in Baghdad and Liberating the American People - which incorported witty references to the US national anthem and the theme from Looney Tunes cartoons - it was evident that Atzmon had no intention of sidestepping the kind of controversy that has earned him much hostility in some corners.

Humour was never far from the surface, however: not only were we treated to a musical parody of Peter and the Wolf entitled Liberating Peter, but we were also offered Atzmon's take on the oft-quoted anecdote about rock star Bono doing a slow hand-clap at a concert.

"Every time I clap my hands," announced Bono from the stage, "a child dies in Africa." To which a lone voice in the crowd replied, "Well, stop clapping your hands then."

If I have but one criticism, it was that the plethora of electronic jiggery-pokery and computerised sampling occasionally detracted from the raw humanity and spirit which epitomises modern jazz at its best(there were times when keyboard player Harrison looked more like an IT engineer than a musician, such was his preoccupation with the gadgets at his disposal).

For all that, this was still a memorable and thrilling showcase for the talents of a passionate, intensely focused musician - and one which is unlikely to be forgotten in a hurry by those who attended.

Graham Williams, Live Review, Taliesin Arts Centre, South Wales Evening Post , September 07

Err … Wow.
I don’t know what to say - I wouldn’t have a clue how to write a review of a jazz gig: I don’t go to enough, I don’t know enough, I’ve not heard enough, so I won’t - except to say: last night was absolutely amazing.

There was warm flat beer, a beer glass for the raffle money and polite fights over the too few chairs, there were perhaps an excess of comb-overs and billowing décolletages and only the lack of a fag fug told you that the shabby bar jazz club had not slipped through a real time warp but the people are wonderfully welcoming (wouldn’t you be if you were mad enough to run a provincial jazz club) and dedicated. And the Band …

Asaf Sirkis on drums, Yaron Stavi on bass and Frank Harrison on keyboards would make a blistering trio, and they do when Gilad has blown himself out but with all four at full stretch it was ecstatic, mesmerising, shattering even. A wild sound world, veering from the ironic and funny to direct and passionate, from contemplative to swaggering, and from sweet and gentle to brutally agressive and back again, weaving together the sounds of the middle east, north Africa, klezmer and bebop. More sophisticated, subtle and varied than anything else I’ve heard them do and … absolutely overwhelming. And, to be honest, very, very loud.

If you can possibly see them live, do.
I’m dreading getting their new album, Refuge (of course, Gilad was signing advance copies after the show but we were too broke to get one) - how can it possibly live up to last night. But we will - I suppose it can be like a snap shot from that perfect holiday.

When it comes to punching above one's weight, Stratford Jazz is right up there.

The weekly free Sunday evenings at the White Swan are consistently high in quality, and when they do have to charge an entrance fee, it is always for something rather special, and still remarkably good value.

The iconoclastic Israeli-born saxophonist and composer Gilad Atzmon has played there before and chosen to include the White Swan in his tour schedule to promote his fine new album with the Orient House Ensemble.

It's called Refuge and reveals the band, now seven years old, in exceptionally good form.

Atzmon is one of the most forthright players in the business - in fact his punch and certainty of phrasing on alto often calls to mind Charlie Parker, and you don't get much better than that.

The band, with Asaf Sirkis pushing from the drum chair, Yaron Stavi filling the bottom end and Frank Harrison expansive and articulate on various keyboards, is wonderfully honed by all their heavy gig schedule.

The new album is as passion-filled as ever, though Atzmon restricts his proselytising to the music, and avoids the Zionist-bating this time around.

In the liner notes, Gilad is cynical about his earlier idealism that somehow the Orient House Ensemble could make the world a better place with their music.

Now he says he has realised that "music is not the messenger, it is actually the message" and that what the band has learned is to "sing together".

Find out just how uplifting and inspiring, when the newspaper headlines have been getting you down, at the White Swan in Stratford on Sunday evening.

For more about Stratford Jazz go to www.stratfordjazz.org.uk and for more about Gilad Atzmon and the Orient House Ensemble, as well as the new album, Refuge, now out on Enja Records (and worth four stars by my reckoning).

This won't be a political concert," said Gilad Atzmon, as he took to the tiny stage at the Brentwood Theatre with his quartet.

Sceptical laughter greeted this, because the prospect of Atzmon playing anything without political overtones is about as likely as Max Roach playing without rhythm or Bill Evans without harmony.

For this tall and burly Jewish saxophonist, born in Israel but resident in the UK, music has long been a way of putting forward a political message. Atzmon holds strong views on the Palestinian question, the sort that cause him to be regularly labelled an anti-Semite and Jewish self-hater. Whole websites are devoted to trashing his views.

So it's not surprising that Atzmon seemed an angry presence on stage. His music, however, is basically pacific and Utopian, however impassioned it sometimes becomes.

The first number, Autumn in Baghdad, launched off with a modal melancholy that soon burgeoned into protesting high melisma. It soon became evident that on the level of technical skill with alto and soprano saxes and clarinet, Atzmon is a real master.

He makes a lovely liquid sound and produces beautifully formed rapid roulades with every note clean as a whistle. Even more remarkable is the way he can turn these instruments into something strange and exotic.

The Burning Bush began with a low, plaintive recitation, full of microtonal inflections and infused with a strange colour like some Near-Eastern folk instrument.

So far, the references to things Eastern had been free of any specifically Jewish flavour. But later we had a number (drawn, like nearly everything we heard, from the new album Refuge) that suddenly transformed before our ears into a tipsy klezma dance, having started out in a pertly regular manner with a touch of something sardonic.

This was one example of Atzmon's ingenious way of leading one kind of music to another. Here the effect was surprising and humorous; at other times it was tinged with pathos; but whatever the local colours invoked, the idiom was basically a "straight-ahead" jazz one.

The other members of the quartet were rather too much in Atzmon's shadow, but when they finally emerged from it keyboard player Frank Harrison turned out to be the most interesting, his harmonically dense interludes making an effective foil to Atzmon's high-flown ecstasies.

For UK tour details see www.gilad.co.uk. The album Refuge is available on Enja Records

Ivan Hewett , Sunday Telegraph, Brentwood Theatre gig, September 07