Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » The Omer Avital Group: Think With Your Heart

135

The Omer Avital Group: Think With Your Heart

By

View read count
The Omer Avital Group: Think With Your Heart
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 unison choruses and melodious lyricism. Elsewhere, the musicians sustain a series of tightly woven frameworks while also communicating a loose vibe amid variable undercurrents and softly stated choruses. However, Avital's beautifully conceptualized arrangements and melodic compositional gifts surface on more than just a few occasions.

The majority of these works are constructed upon buoyantly executed rhythms, all encircled within climactic opuses and the musicians' intermittent injections of funk, soul and swing. Avital and associates take the listener on an enigmatic journey during "Marrakesh," thanks to the sax sections' efficient utilization of space atop a world beat vamp and a celebratory Middle Eastern style motif. Nonetheless, the woodwind section and the percussion unit keep this train a rolling via an abundance of glimmering solos and sympathetic interpretations of Avital's often-lucid compositions. No doubt, Avital has produced one of the top ten jazz outings of the year. - - Emphatically recommended!

Track Listing

1.Redemption Song 2.Flow 3.Think With Your Heart 4.Stella By Starlight 6.Andaluz 7.Marrakesh 8.Tune In

Personnel

Omer Avital
bass, acoustic

Greg Tardy: tenor sax & bass clarinet - Jay Collins: flute, tenor sax, bamboo flutes & soprano sax

Album information

Title: Think With Your Heart | Year Released: 2001 | Record Label: Blue Moon

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Eternal Moments
Yoko Yates
From "The Hellhole"
Marshall Crenshaw
Tramonto
John Taylor

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.