Red Sea Next Week

Next week I will perform at the Red Sea Winter Jazz Festival in Eilat, Israel. It will be a solo piano concert, in which Rona Kenan  will be my special guest:

Red Sea Winter Jazz Festival, Eilat – Friday, January 20, 21:00.

Rona is one of my favorite singer-songwriters in recent years. Her texts are strong, poetic and uncompromising; her compositions have surprising and interesting twists; and her vocal performances are always honest and convincing, and very varied in tone and energy.

Right after my concert with Rona, The Bad Plus will perform on the same stage. I’ve been following this great band since they started out and their music is extremely original and beautiful. In Eilat they will perform On Sacred Ground – their version of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Several years ago I took one lesson with Ethan Iverson, the band’s pianist, in New York; It will suffice to say that I still sometime practice the simple and profound things he showed me. I’m definitely looking forward to hearing this performance.

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I will stick around at the festival to hear my friends Third World Love on Saturday. They are an incredible group and their show is highly recommended. And Thank you Omer Avital and Avishai Cohen (TWL’s bassist and trumpeter) for this nice mention at an interview for Ha’aretz this week:

“Among the newest generation of jazz players, Cohen and Avital praise guitarist Gilad Hekselman and pianist Omer Klein as outstanding young musicians now working abroad who are leaders in their fields.

‘In April, my new album with Omer Klein will be released’,says Avital, showing that “three generations” of Israel jazz musicians abroad are continuing to mingle and influence each other.”

The full story is here.

The album Avital is mentioning is a release of a recording we did a long time ago – in 2006 I think – playing his music with Avishai Cohen on trumpet, Joel Frahm on saxophone and Daniel Freedman on drums. We were playing a lot together at the time and I can’t wait to hear this music mixed, mastered and out there.