Articles

David Buchbinder: Walk to the Sea

By Dave Wayne

Now that the exploration of the relationships between different ethnic musics and modern-day improvised music has reached the first of- hopefully-many crescendos, forward-looking artists such as the Canadian trumpeter David Buchbinder and pianist Hilario Duran have been looking at the many intersections of disparate-seeming ethnic musics through the same lens. Never mind the fact that a lot of Jewish musicians were directly involved in the Latin-dance and Exotica fads of the mid-20th Century. There's nary a trace of cheese or ...

David Buchbinder & Odessa/Havana featuring Hilario Duran: Walk To The Sea

By Glenn Astarita

Walk To The Sea is award-winning trumpeter David Buchbinder's sophomore album with the Odessa/Havana band, featuring Grammy-nominated pianist and musical director Hilario Duran. It's a spot-on world music venture that stylizes indigenous concepts and applications from Spain, amid Jewish folk, Arabic and Afro-Cuban structural components, woven into a majestic concoction of radiant jazz-centric fare. With triumphant and impacting horns, frothy percussion vamps, alternating pulses, and probing ballads, Buchbinder persuasively excites and entertains. The trumpeter links a festive outline ...

David Buchbinder: Odessa / Havana

By David Miller

How is it possible to create a fusion between Jewish and Cuban music? The two cultures seem to be at odds with each other--the laid back, relaxed syncopation of the Latin tradition and the spiritual urgency of the Jewish faith and its music. Canadian trumpeter David Buchbinder, however, successfully achieves just such a combination on his collaboration with pianist Hilario Durán, Odessa / Havana. The recording does not merely take certain elements from each tradition; rather, it encompasses, ...

David Buchbinder: Odessa/Havana

By Elliott Simon

Significant Jewish participation in the Latin dance craze of the 1950s resulted in several novelty fusion records that Latinized traditional Jewish melodies within a jazz context. By presenting the melody against a Latin rhythm, “Hava Nagilah" was thusly transformed into a cha-cha. In 2002, Cuban percussionist Roberto Rodriguez reinvented and dramatically advanced this sub-genre by beautifully blending danzon and klezmer into a new music. Trumpet player David Buchbinder of Canada's Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band has released Odessa/Havana and added yet ...

David Buchbinder: Odessa/Havana

By Eyal Hareuveni

A few years ago Tzadik's Radical Jewish Culture series explored a little-known mash-up of Jewish and Cuban musical traditions on two charming recordings by percussionist Roberto Juan Rodriguez--El Danzon de Moises (2002) and Baila! Gitano Baila! (2004). But as fascinating as those recordings were, they featured a musical perspective by an all-star cast of musicians who hardly exercised these great musical traditions.

Odessa/Havana, by the Canadian leader of the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, David Buchbinder, suggests ...

David Buchbinder: Odessa/Havana

By Dan McClenaghan

Two distinct and seemingly very different musical galaxies spin into each other on trumpeter David Buchbinder's Odessa/Havana, setting off a gravitational push-and-pull of musical momentums. It's a Cuban/Klezmer blend that stirs up the best of both musical styles--the churning, bubbling, rhythms of the mambo and the rubbery freewheeling exuberance of traditional Jewish sounds.Canadian trumpeter/composer/band leader David Buchbinder, who leads the Juno-nominated Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, joins forces with pianist Hilario Duran, who did a nine year stint with ...

David Buchbinder: Shurum Burum Jazz Circus

By Ken Kase

David Buchbinder occupies a curious place among modern-day jazz composers. A fine trumpeter with firm roots in jazz, he has used the idiom to explore an eclectic mix of musical styles. The circus tradition, with its emphasis on borrowing from many world cultures, is a natural forum for such experimentation.

The selections on Shurum Burum Jazz Circus depict disparate musical accents vying with one another for position in off-center arrangements that have many surprises. The ensemble, complete with strings and ...