‘ Do you know he is one of the best players alive today?’ someone asked me recently about Gilad Atzmon. I did not know how to reply because for me, Gilad is distinctive and who am I to compare him with anyone else? At the California Club, which converts into a Jazz Club in Ipswich, Suffolk, however, I was to get my answer.
Sammy Stein
From the start, things went well. It was one of those evenings when a player finds the right level of banter for the audience and has them in the palm of their hand after the first number and a bit of well-judged humour. The Orient House Ensemble back Gilad’s playing well and this comes of nearly 25 years of playing together – albeit with a few changes here and there.
Yaron Stavi on bass seems to be able to fill every conceivable gap Gilad leaves (and there are not many) with beautiful, flowing bass lines and his solo sections are wonderful whilst Frank Harrison uses his keys to almost perfection with atmospheric soloes. Mostly playing tracks form their latest album ‘The Whistle Blower’ the band took the listener on journeys through places and settings. Numbers included ‘Gazza Mon Amour’ with its grinding, driving eastern melody and rhythms, ‘The Romantic Church’ which is a gentler number on the album but here extended and enhanced by some wicked bass, keys and a sax solo.
‘The Whistle Blower’ (which has the audience wolf whistling at the appropriate places, encouraged by Gilad and the band singing, slightly off key but with great enthusiasm, and ‘For Moana’ – a beautiful, sex laden piece written about an Italian porn star Moana Pozzi, who later turned to politics – Gilad even looked her up on his I-pod when he realised half the audiences (actually more like 90 percent) had no idea who she was and passed the pictures around the audience, warning the men not to get too excited.
He said it was OK with his wife as she died 20 years ago (Moana, not his wife). ‘Burning Bush’ was dedicated, tongue in cheek to George Bush and as an encore the band played their version of Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell,’s ‘Georgia’.
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