The last concert of the current Hot Jazz season at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art auditorium was marketed as a Cuban jazz event which is misleading to say the least. This labeling was quite misleading, maybe intentionally trying to bring to this (optional) concert in the series an audience that is not usually part of the regular audiences, but taking into account the number of empty seats Friday night I am wondering if the tactics really worked. Maybe it would have been better to present the Rodriguez brothers as what they really are, a pair of young and solid jazz instrumentalists, with passion and talent. Yes, they happen to be of Cuban origin on the side of their father who was born in Guantanamo, Cuba of all places, but their mother is from Ecuador, and they refer to themselves jokingly as ‘Cubadorians’, but they are both born, raised, and educated in the USA, and the Cuban flavor is only one and not necessarily the most important influence on the sound of their music.
source: www.allaboutjazz.com
If there was an obvious Latin component in the sound of the Friday night concert it came from percussionist Gilad Dobretzky, whose variations and improvisations alone or in dialog with drummer Shai Zelman were all full of color and joy. Otherwise about half of the program included original compositions of the two brothers, very much under the shade and influence of great American song writers and musicians like Thelonious Monk or Dizzy Gillespie, to whom the other songs in the programs belonged. Just one song was a popular melody of Cuban origin. Overall it was not a bad evening, Mike Rodriguez is a good trumpet player, his brother Robert is an even better piano player, and we enjoyed a good jazz performance, maybe lacking sparks and passion, but this was certainly not one of the weakest in an uneven season at ‘Hot Jazz’. By the way the program of the next season seems very diverse and promising, and I have already renewed our subscription taking the maximal option of eight concerts.
I have never seen such long lines at the Art Museum in Tel Aviv. When about a decades ago the second intifada broke and led to sky-rocketing insurance prices, which added to political reasons resulted in the Israeli Museums to be pushed at the periphery or simply taken out of the international circuit of art shows, the museum in Tel Aviv wisely decided to focus on Israeli art. The result is that many major shows of Israeli artists were organized in this decade and the success of this last exhibition which was more the result of the public reaction than of art critics feedback or an orchestrated PR campaign demonstrates that the art loving audiences in Israel react to what they perceive as fit to their tastes and can eventually sustain the public part of the museum activity.
Zadok Ben-David explaining his works to guests in the exhibition
Zadok Ben-David was born in Yemen in 1949 and his parents immigrated and brought him to Israel in the same year. He studied Fine Arts at Bezalel in Jerusalem, at the Reading University, and at the Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in London. He lives in the UK for many years.
Out of the Wood
His style seems to be a continuous dialog between form and material, between human silhouettes and vegetation forms. The material that he uses for the bigger works is iron (cut with laser for the bigger dimensions works), but you need to get closer to realize the weight and mass, as the impression created by contemplation is of a delicate two dimensional philigrams, reminding more the Indonesian shades theater characters and sets than traditional European sculpture. If sculpture is traditionally conceived as being about filling the space with forms, the style and techniques that Ben-David developed seem to challenge the tri-dimensional view of objects in search of volatility, of lack of weight and volume. One can say that the real material of Ben-David’s recent works is shadow.
The power piece of the current show is an installation that catches a 150 square meters room (my estimation) – a bed of sand where thousands of miniature plants, trees, flowers that represents a different world created by the artist.There are no two identical pieces of vegetation in this huge garden, and Ben-David is said to have built each piece as a realistic representation of real-life vegetation.
The dimensions and shape of the work create an interesting relation between the viewer and the art objects. We are used to be dwarfed by some sculptures, relate as equal to other, or bend to watch with attention an individual miniature. Here, when you enter the room the field is at your feet and the first sensation is of bird view. Seen from the entry the field is black. Then, when you start walking around colors and perspective change likw you walk in time through the seasons cycle. In order to see the details you need to lie and watch close to the sand field, as you do when in the mid of nature you lie on grass and watch wild life.
Are you Talking to me?
The dialog between man and nature seems to be the principal focus of Zadok Ben-David’s exhibition nowadays. The idea of planting flowers and other plants as art in the sand may also be read as a paraphrase of the myth of making the desert blossom. Non-confirmed rumors heard from people in the line say that the exhibition is the first that will take Ben-David’s works to many other places in the world in the coming years. To all friends who will have the opportunity to see his art in a museum close to their place I recommend not to miss it.
The third concert in the ‘Hot Jazz’ series at the Tel Aviv Art Museum had as guest the American singer Vanessa Rubin.
Born in Cleveland, Vanessa Rubin moved in 1982 in New York and started a singing career, in parallel with a teaching and jazz evangelist path. She sang with Lionel Hampton, the Mercer Ellington Orchestra, Herbie Hancock, the Woody Herman Orchestra, and the Jazz Crusaders. Her teaching and coaching activities include music consultancy and student classes at such institutions as the Thelonious Monk Institute, Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center. Her repertoire includes many standards from the great female vocal American songbook, and works of composers such as Duke Ellington, Gershwin, and Dizzy Gillespie.
The show in Tel Aviv tonight was unfortunately partly spoiled by very bad sound engineering, one of the worst if not the worst in my memory in the many years since I watch this series of jazz concerts. The acoustic bass of Assaf Hachimi was almost permanently too loud, covering the rest of the players, and especially the the clarinet of Ilan Salem. For the clarinet to take the place of the saxophone in a jazz band, it needs not only instrumental talent and personality which Salem may have, but also clarity of sound and musical space, which was missing tonight completely. Young and gifted pianist Nitai Hershkowitz was the instrumental surprise of the evening. Shai Zalman did his usual gigs.
Vanessa Rubin tried her best in the given conditions, she slalomed valiantly through the technical difficulties in the first part, and succeeded to catch the attention and affection of the audience, with a series of standards which made good service to her vocal and emotional capabilities. After the break she seemed to be tired, tried to reconnect with the audience by telling some stories, but abandoned and cut short the performance after only another four or five songs. The few recordings that I found on youTube show that we missed the opportunity to know better a great singer, whose performance could have been memorable on a better night.
