Oded Tzur: Isabela

Saxophonist Oded Tzur burst onto the jazz scene in 2012 with a remarkable approach to his instrument that drew upon his studies with Hariprasad Chaurasia, a master of Hindustani Classical music. Joining pianist Shai Maestro, bassist Petros Klampanis, and drummer Ziv Ravitz, he formed a New York-based quartet that began performing locally and ultimately released a debut album, Like a Great River (Yellowbird), in 2015. On that thrilling recording, the wider world was exposed to Tzur's unique mélange of Indian ragas, classical, Jewish liturgical music, and jazz.

Since that release, Tzur recorded another album with the same quartet, Translator's Note (Yellowbird, 2017), earning him the oft-repeated descriptor of "a volcano on the ocean floor." In 2020, he made his debut on ECM Records with Here Be Dragons, a comparatively understated work that found Tzur in a more contemplative mood with a new quartet consisting of himself, Klampanis, Johnathan Blake on drums, and Nitai Hershkovitz on piano. On Isabela, his second release for ECM, the group crackles with energy, brimming with moments that command attention and shimmer with heartfelt emotion. 

Concise opening track "Invocation" is like a microcosm of Tzur's defiantly melodic approach, bubbling to an arresting crescendo in less than two minutes. It sets the tone for the album's disarming beauty which continues with "Noam,"  a delectable track whose folklike theme and invigorating interplay could have fit well with any from his first two albums. About halfway through, it begins to shudder into the kind of elegantly controlled atonality one might find on a later Tomasz Stańko recording, only to then reassemble unexpectedly, proof of this group's profoundly simpatico interaction. 

The album's centerpiece arrives with "The Lion Turtle," and listeners will be hard pressed to find a single track this year that makes a better case for jazz as a uniquely moving, vital medium. Over nine sublime minutes, Tzur provides ample space for his collaborators to explore the song's labyrinthine theme, with Hershkovitz and Klampanis pulling in unforeseen directions that bolster the track's meditative quality. Its maze-like raga is initially difficult to grasp, but instead of cerebral abstruseness, it immerses the listener in a calming optimism, somehow teeming with ideas and supernaturally still at once. 

Only on the title track does the momentum slow, its spaciousness providing an effective counterpoint to the more energized moments that surround it. It unfolds at first like a plume of smoke dissipating in the air, before it too begins to simmer and finally erupt with some of the group's fiercest and most gorgeous playing. This catharsis gives way to the instantly captivating final track, "Love Song for the Rainy Season," where Tzur provides the initial raga melody and then steps back to allow for electrifying performances from Klampanis, Hershkovitz, and particularly Blake, whose thrilling solo leaves the listener awestruck at the album's conclusion. 

This is an album of small miracles and spellbinding moments: the way Tzur returns in its the final measures to the plaintive opening phrase of "Invocation;" the way his saxophone enters the fray in "Love Song for the Rainy Season" at the perfect moment with a torrent of knotty melodies; the way "The Lion Turtle" so patiently builds to its breathtaking, emotional heights. A high water mark for ECM in the new decade and an unquestionable contender for one of the year's best, one could arguably only fault it for ending too soon.