Jazz Articles about Omer Avital

The Omer Avital Group: Asking No Permission

by Brian P. Lonergan
February 15, 2006

The Omer Avital Group was a mainstay at New York's Smalls club in the mid '90s. An unfortunate turn of events with record companies suppressed the bassist/composer's major label debut, and in recent years Avital has spent more time working and studying in his native Israel. But with the release of Asking No Permission and a recent series of Greenwich Village gigs, including a near-magical set at the Fat Cat in mid-January, New York's jazz scene is once again abuzz ...

Omer Avital Group: Asking No Permission

by Paul Olson
February 7, 2006

Omer Avital's new release, Asking No Permission, isn't actually new at all. Rather, it's the first of the projected four-disc series The Smalls Years, presenting live performances of bassist/composer Omer Avital's group at the West Village Smalls nightclub in 1996-97. It's not unheard of for a label to release archival live performances simply because, well, they've got the tapes and they might as well--but this previously unreleased set of seven tunes, recorded on one Thursday night in April of 1996, ...

The Omer Avital Group: Asking No Permission

by Jim Santella
February 6, 2006

In a live 1996 session at Smalls in New York, Omer Avital leads this stellar sextet through a program of six originals and one standard. Nothing is standard, however, about the way this double bassist interprets modern jazz.

A “young lion on the New York jazz scene, Avital was born in Israel. He studied classical guitar at the Givataim Conservatory and switched to acoustic bass at Talma Yalin, Israel's leading high school for the arts. In his early ...

The Omer Avital Group: Think With Your Heart

by C. Michael Bailey
January 1, 2002

Pure Post Bop.

Avishai Cohen is not the only Israeli-born bassist flexing his muscles on the United States Jazz Scene. Omer Avital has provided an expansive debut recording in Think With Your Heart. Hyperintelligent and free, Think With Your Heart could be considered what happens to Post Bop as a genre when it is perfected. Add to this the ethnic flair that is infused (hear the cacophonous opening to “Flow") and the music makes an almost religious statement demanding to ...

The Omer Avital Group: Think With Your Heart

by Glenn Astarita
December 1, 2001

These days, when a young bassist leads a horns-based band, the comparisons and correlations to the late Charles Mingus become inevitable. Israeli-born bassist/composer Omer Avital delivers the goods in prominent fashion while exhibiting star-like qualities on his debut solo offering, entitled Think With Your Heart !

The band launches into a zestful Afro-Cuban groove, featuring Jay Collins' peppery flute work on “Flow." With this piece, Avital's fluent upper register soloing and broad toned walking bass lines augment the soloists' radiant ...

The Omer Avital Group: Think With Your Heart

by Glenn Astarita
December 1, 2001

These days, when a young bassist leads a horns-based band, the comparisons and correlations to the late Charles Mingus become inevitable. Israeli-born bassist/composer Omer Avital delivers the goods in prominent fashion while exhibiting star-like qualities on his debut solo offering, entitled Think With Your Heart !

The band launches into a zestful Afro-Cuban groove, featuring Jay Collins' peppery flute work on “Flow." With this piece, Avital's fluent upper register soloing and broad toned walking bass lines augment the soloists' radiant ...