This review appears in the February 2011 issue of All About Jazz-New York.
[Note: As of the March 2011 issue, AAJ-NY will be known as The New York City Jazz Record. Details here.]
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Shauli Einav, Opus One (Plus Loin)
By David R. Adler
It’s clear that Israeli-born saxophonist Shauli Einav is capable of “blowing his face off,” as pianist and friend Jeremy Siskind writes in the liner notes to Einav’s Opus One. But this album has a personal flavor that a mere chops showcase wouldn’t have offered.
The musical choices are sound from the start: Andy Hunter’s trombone gives Einav a frontline sound evocative of the J.J. Johnson-Sonny Stitt partnership of 1949, or to be more current, the Dave Holland Quintet with Chris Potter and Robin Eubanks. But there’s no imitation here. On the lovely but devilishly difficult waltz “Shavuot,” or the two short drumless sketches “Interlude” and “Coda,” there’s a rich contrapuntal sonority that’s hard to resist. Shai Maestro’s piano, too, lends Opus One its own harmonic stamp (his synth solo on the leadoff track arrives as a nice jolt). Bassist Joseph Lepore and drummer Johnathan Blake keep the music grounded in a visceral brand of swing, even when Einav is at his most heady and intricate.
Einav’s press materials bill Opus One as his debut disc, although there’s a 2008 effort called Home Seek to be found at CD Baby. Whatever the case, Opus One is arguably Einav’s first mature statement, blending modernist jazz with influences from his home country as typified by the hip 7/8 treatment of “Hayu Leilot” (“Those Were the Nights”), an Israeli standard.
Aside from this, the program is original, and Einav spends the first half of it on tenor sax before switching to soprano, staying a bit back (perhaps too much so) in the mix. His writing is fresh but rooted in precedents: a bit of “Dolphin Dance” harmony in “Jerusalem Theme,” hints of Wayne Shorter’s dark translucency in “Naama,” a cooking hardbop vibe spiked with rhythmic surprises in “The Damelin.”
An Eastman graduate, Einav is hardly the first in a new Israeli jazz wave that his late mentor Arnie Lawrence did so much to inspire. But with his expressive horn, imaginative pen and confident bandleading, Einav is already setting himself apart.
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