He may not have poll victories to his credit yet, or press clippings declaring him the next big thing, but with his third album, Dark Beauty, guitarist Issi Rozen makes it unequivocally clear that he possesses what every jazz artist seeks - a personal sound, both as an instrumentalist and a bandleader. This is no easy achievement when you first become drawn to jazz from a distance, as Rozen did in his native Israel, and then bring yourself to Berklee College, where the lure of guitar heroes and guitar clichés can sometimes prove overwhelming. Yet Rozen possesses a conceptual clarity to match his technical and interpretive skills, and he has not jumped among styles and formats in search of easy solutions or fleeting success. The Issi Rozen quartet has been identifiable from its 1998 debut Red Sea and its sequel Homeland Blues to the present. It only gains maturity and eloquence with time.
Growing up in a culture where both the modality and the performance style shared similarities with jazz gave Rozen an organic entry point to the music. "All of the best Middle Eastern musicians improvise," he points out. "The great oud and clarinet players I heard when I was young weren't reading music." Rozen also saw how musicians from other cultures were able to assimilate the jazz language while retaining their accent. "The Latin jazz players were the first to realize that they sound different because of their background," he points out. Rozen has used this knowledge to incorporate his own heritage, as he does most clearly here in originals such as "Ramat Gan" and "Geshem," and in his arrangement of the traditional melody "Sheharhoret."
At the same time, Rozen was developing a dark, tactile personality on his instrument that resonates perfectly with his evocative material. "When you start playing jazz, you want to be as straight-ahead as possible and jettison all other influences," he admits when considering his evolution as a guitarist. "Eventually, you realize that you are an individual and, as you continue to progress, that individuality becomes less conscious and more of an organic choice."
Still, Rozen's ability to get his own sound on the instrument sets him apart. "My sound is still coming together," he stresses, "because a sound of your own is one of the hardest things to develop. It's a larger concept than the instrument, the strings and the amp. You have to know what you're looking for, and you have to be able to hear it when you find it." What is most impressive about where Rozen is at right now is that his sound allows for great intensity without excess volume. There is taste as well as passion in everything he plays.
The uncommon stability of the Rozen quartet is also a major achievement. Pianist Gilad Barkan has been aboard since the beginning. Like Rozen, Barkan is an Israeli native and a Berklee graduate. "But I didn't meet Gilad until he came to Berklee, because his family had moved to the US when he was 14 or 15," the guitarist points out. Barkan's understanding of Israeli music has proven invaluable, and his lyricism is a perfect complement to the leader's own. As the first soloist on many of the tracks, Barkan also displays an unerring table-setting affinity for the moods Rozen's music creates.
Drummer Harvey Wirht, a native of Surinam, was heard on Homeland Blues, and is one of the most sought after drummers in the Boston area. His beat is always impeccable, he never stops listening, and he can make the Middle Eastern rhythms swing as infectiously as straight time. As "Inspiration" demonstrates, Wirht also commands a melodic approach to percussion that allows him to solo effectively even on ballads.
Bassist Thomson Kneeland, another first-call player on the Boston scene, is the newest quartet member, and as astute in sustaining grooves as in his solo efforts. His bowing on the opening track and his pizzicato statement on "Spring" suggest the range of his imagination, while his presence in the rhythm section makes this the strongest edition of Rozen's quartet to date. "There is a comfort level with these musicians that leaves me unafraid of experimenting," Rozen notes. "We have played together enough that they understand what I want, but then again I picked these specific players because they understand intuitively."
What results is a program in which the quartet sounds just as at home waltzing daintily on "Maya's Blues" or bopping its way through "Sixteen" and the Charlie Parker classic "Segment" as it does on the numbers with clearer echoes of the Middle East. "The songs have become looser and more open," Rozen says, "with more room for personal interpretation. I'm more open to what everyone else hears." To which we might only add that Rozen is hearing with greater clarity and maturity, and that all of his music glows with a blend of sincerity and originality. He has reached the point where he doesn't play Middle Eastern jazz, or any other hyphenated form. He plays Issi Rozen jazz.
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