A trio from Israel’s top musical institute is set to give India a different flavour of jazz. Their music is a mix of classic tunes with groovy rhythms of New Orleans. The members chat with Shrabasti Mallik
They are smart, witty and cool enough to be playing something as groovy as jazz but this trio from the Rimon Jazz Institute, Israel, has more to them than being musicians. They perhaps are the only jazz group comprising the institute director, a faculty member and a student. The trio is in India to participate in the fifth Delhi International Jazz Festival.
The story of their coming together is an interesting one. When Ronen Shmueli, director, received an invitation from India to be a part of the festival, he wanted to represent the Rimon Music School, of which the institute is a part. He approached faculty member and renowned trombonist Yonathan Voltzok and student drummer Gal Petel. “Yonathan and I have been playing together for a long time and are familiar with each other. I often meet Gal in the institute and I know how good he is at the drums and we interact a lot and play a lot of music together,” says the 28-year-old director.
The trio is indeed special in a way that they do not have a bass player but Ronen plays the rhodes piano, the sound of which can play at low frequencies, like bass. “Today it is rare to have a frontline organ player who plays the trombone. Generally you see the tenor player or a trumpet. The combination of the rhodes and the trombone has a unique jivy sound. Gal, on the other hand, has to act a little differently because we do not have a bass player. But this helps us come up with something fresh,” Ronan adds.
The uniqueness of the trio lies in the fact that they play versatile tracks. They have a knack of picking up old jazz standard music like Tea for Two and turn it into groovy rhythms of New Orleans. Ronen explains, “We can pick up traditional jazz songs, or any song, and turn them into something completely different. For example, we have taken the song from popular game Sonic, created a jazz tune for it and have improvised on that. In 2015 there is so much material to play with, so we are thinking of taking something from another genre and turn it into jazz.”
Yonathan shares that jazz is an art of being eclectic, deriving whatever you want from life — whether it’s music from a video game or anything that you heard. There are limitations to jazz. “We are influenced by everything we listen to, so we make music out of what’s in our memory. We have over 100 variations of each song,” he says. Ronen adds one can take the original melody and do another drum roll or add another chord. “Jazz gives you the feeling of freedom. Through our music we share that feeling,” he adds.
To play with the director and a teacher can be intimidating for many but for 22-year-old Gal it is an experience. He feels happy to be the “chosen one”. He says, “Ever since the genre came into being, the masters have always played with their students to allow them to learn through an experience. We, at the institute, always try to do collaborative music. The fact that there is not much age difference among us helps us coordinate better.”
Jazz has been a growing fascination in Israel. The number of musicians and followers of the genre has been on a rise. “It is surprising given the fact that the country itself is small but there are a lot of high schools who conduct jazz programmes and also have it in their curriculum. The audience now is growing, so we have two to three jazz festivals every year. There are many clubs and organisers who bring in jazz musicians from abroad,” informs the director.