An encouragement to discover more music using your preferences
With our regular columnist, local musician Dr Michael Whiticker
FOR this month’s article I’d like to share some music I’ve uncovered in my online explorations.
I started this search with the work of the recently departed giant of the Indian tabla, Zakir Hussain. Hussain had played with jazz rock guitar legend John McLaughlin in the group Shakti, a trio I was lucky to see in Hamburg many years ago.
Continuing my hunt, Shakti led me on to a varied but somehow related list of artists, and from these it was Time Grove’s album More Than One Thing that grabbed my attention. The album came out in 2018 and was the work of the nine-piece, Tel Aviv-based outfit Time Grove, led by pianist Nitai Hershkovits and producer Rejoicer.
Playing it in my car through impressive door and dash-mounted speakers at a more than reasonable volume, I was enveloped in the sonorous power, inspiring composition and performance, masterly production and arrangements on this album.
Although largely piano-driven – featuring the virtuosic Nitai Hershkovits – the variety of percussive colours displayed is all-encompassing, with the addition of brass and winds, bass, guitar and a plethora of synthesizer textures – satisfying on every level.
The music might be loosely described as jazz fusion, but that possibly only helps someone such as myself, who was schooled in the musical explorations of the 70s, where various subsets of popular, folk, jazz, blues, rock, country, modern and traditional classical, experimental, electronic and world music were clearly defined by the leading exponent in these fields.
Where this album departs from other (let’s limit it to) jazz albums (that I know of) is in the opening presentation of the album’s main melodic material. This introductory piece, called TG Theme, is a somewhat ladder-like, yet eerie melodic line that is taken up and doubled in unison by some of the instruments that will feature on the album. Phrases from this melodic theme are then repeated in various guises in most of the pieces that follow.
It is immediately evident in the exquisite, lilting, lyrical piece that follows TG Theme, the well-titled Second Attention. If I was to reduce my listening experience of this album to one sentence, I’d venture:
It is a compilation of adventurous and beautiful, groove, hip hop and jazz-inclined, four or so minute pieces, that state ideas then elaborate them, while dropping in constant surprises to titillate the ear, coming full circle to end with a gentle haunting piece, a reminder perhaps of where we began.
Let me finish in encouraging you, as I have done, to find great music by following your leads. Nezach, or the penultimate, ecstatic Roy the King – further pieces on More Than One Thing – brought to mind the music of keyboardist Joe Zawinul and his band Weather Report, a 70s group (including Wayne Shorter and Jaco Pastorius) that are definitely worth knowing! If you don’t, or have perhaps forgotten what they were all about, then there is your homework!
Have a great month,
Michael.