Tag: Ehud Asherie
A nice review for Ehud Asherie “Organic”…
Skip Spratt of SaxShed.com reviews Ehud Asherie “Upper West Side”…
Tenor Saxophonist Harry Allen joins thirty-year-old pianist Ehud Asherie on their newest release Upper West Side on Posi-Tone Records.
The recent release features Asherie’s piano and Allen’s tenor in a traditional jazz duo setting. The two traditionalists compliment each other on a slew of standards such as It Had to be You, Our Love is Here to Stay and Have You Met Miss Jones. Two of my favorites on Upper West Side are the fast paced romps I Want to Be Happy and My Blue Heaven.
Although the music of Asherie and Allen is new, it harkens back to a simpler time not found since the 1930s, 40s or 50s. Allen’s tenor saxophone is dark, lush and swings heavily. Allen’s sound and feel is not unlike that of Stan Getz, Al Cohn or even Zoot Sims. Asherie’s piano is crisp and jumping as demonstrated on his walking bass and stride piano heard on the aforementioned I Want to Be Happy.
Any listener need only listen to I’m in the Mood for Love to grasp the understanding and reverence Allen has for the old time saxophone players. There are no rough edges in his playing or delivery – just solid saxophone playing for pleasurable listening.
Ehud Asherie and Harry Allen have most decidedly not reinvented the wheel on Upper West Side.However, if you are a lover of traditional jazz and looking for well-known standards delivered with respect for their origins, this recording is for you!
Another great review for Ehud Asherie “Upper West Side”…
Raul Da’Gama Rose reviews Ehud Asherie “Upper West Side”…
Upper West Side is as fine a duet album as has been made by a pianist with another instrumentalist. This declaration may very possibly include the albums made by Hank Jones with Tommy Flanagan and Oscar Peterson with Dizzy Gillespie. It is a credit to pianist Ehud Asherie that he made this album at such a young age in comparison to the masters who have been mentioned in the same breath, perhaps with seeming blasphemy. However, considering Asherie’s instrumental mastery, the superiority of his musical ideation, the often surprising turns of his improvisations, and—this is probably of paramount importance—his understanding of music history, he is qualified to be named with Jones and Peterson. And then there is the small matter of his duet partner: tenor saxophonist Harry Allen.
Allen has been spoken of in the same breath as Stan Getz, a musician who he resembles in his staggering sense of harmony and rhythm. There is another reason why Allen is so uniquely suited for a project like this: the tenor saxophonist is a very old soul—not a moldy fig, but a truly old soul. Few among the younger generation of tenor saxophonists—with the possible exception of JD Allen—have such a sweeping sense of the history of their instrument. Just like JD Allen channels John Coltrane, Harry Allen summons up the ghosts of Coleman Hawkins and Getz. There are eerie moments on “O Pato” when it seems as if Getz were playing in the shadows alongside Allen. Similarly, in the hauntingly beautiful “Passion Flower,” Allen conjures up the spirit of Hawkins as powerfully as anyone could. Asherie does the same for Duke Ellington.
Asherie’s ability to inhabit so many styles is uncanny for a pianist his age. His stride playing is not just in the pocket, it is also on the money, as demonstrated on “Have You Seen Miss Jones.” This is also evident in the wonderful chase that ensues when Asherie runs the boogie-woogie down, taking off after Allen on “I Want To Be Happy.” This performance is reminiscent of some of the most significant moments of the Oscar Peterson/Dizzy Gillespie duets. But what is most memorable about this album is the understated playing of both players. While the pianist and saxophonist are emphatic when displaying their outgoing personalities, both play well within themselves. There is no finer account of this aspect than the soaring moments on that chart.
The art of the ballad is probably best remembered by its greatest exponents, although not many musicians can play a ballad like Harry Allen. His control of emotion and his choice of notes are almost as close to perfection as those of a poet and his love poem. And it behooves a fine producer to close a memorable album with two fine and playful songs about love at its liveliest.
Track Listing: Learnin’ The Blues; It Had To Be You; O Pato; Our Love is Here To Stay; Have You Met Miss Jones?; Passion Flower; I Want To Be Happy; Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams; I’m In The Mood For Love; Love Will Find A Way; My Blue Heaven.
Personnel: Ehud Asherie: piano; Harry Allen: tenor saxophone.
AAJ review for Ehud Asherie “Upper West Side” with Harry Allen…
www.allaboutjazz.com
Ehud Asherie with Harry Allen: Upper West Side (2012)
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By C. MICHAEL BAILEY,
Track review of “My Blue Heaven”
Wherever tenor saxophonist Harry Allen shows up, there is sure to be a major outbreak of Old School. Along with Scott Hamilton, Allen is a keeper of the flame encompassing saxophone practice from Frankie Trumbauer to Lester Young. Pianist Ehud Asherie is cut from the same bolt asRalph Sutton and Dick Hyman. His previous Posi-Tone recordings, Look Out (2007), Modern Life (2010), andOrganic (2010) all demonstrate that Asherie is well-schooled in stride and modern keyboard styles, as well as Chitlin’ Circuit greasy organ jazz.
In combination with Allen, Asherie entertains his love of 1930s piano (Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson) and the songbook of that era. Here are two jazz historians, choosing a period and performing a chamber duet on the best material that period has to offer. The Donaldson/White standard, “My Blue Heaven,” is just antique enough to have that attractive and rich attic smell without being passé. Asherie’s left hand is sure; his right: rolling thunder. He solos with perfect confidence, mixing things up with modern touches as he goes. Allen adopts a bit of a Ben Webster rasp while skillfully demonstrating a style of saxophone playing from when tenor was king. Upper West Sideis two superb musicians having one very fine afternoon…
Personnel: Ehud Asherie: piano; Harry Allen: tenor saxophone.
Record Label: Posi-Tone Records
Lucid Culture reviews Ehud Asherie “Upper West Side”…
Ehud Asherie and Harry Allen’s Magical Upper West Side
What does the thought of New York’s Upper West Side conjure up for you? Homeless Iraq war vets panhandling at the subway station at 72nd and Broadway? Cops frisking teens for contraband twenty blocks north in order to meet the quotas of cheap arrests arbitrarily imposed by NYPD brass? Brand-new multimillion-dollar condos infested with bedbugs? Such is the state of the Upper West Side, 2012. For those who prefer a Woody Allen-style Upper West Side of the mind, pianist Ehud Asherie and tenor saxophonist Harry Allen have a new duo album by that title just out from Posi-Tone that conjures up a vastly more enjoyable, suavely urbane milieu. Imagine spacious prewar buildings, low lights, wood paneling, red wine and purist jazz and you are on the right track.
The two make a good team. Allen is the rake and Asherie is his wingman. Allen’s misty shtick works as well as it does because he happens to be a hell of a blues player, and will surprise you here and there with the occasional detour into gracefully edgy microtonal swoops and dives. Among the new breed of jazz organists, Asherie is a standout player with impeccable rhythm and an intuitive feel for melodic basslines. What makes this album different is that on all the midtempo and upbeat tracks here, he’s basically playing stride piano – but with a judicious, tight swing rather than a careening barrelhouse attack. After all, if you’re doing an album of standards, you have to put your own mark on them.
The opening track, Learnin the Blues perfectly capsulizes the appeal of the album, setting a mood within the first few bars with casually steady, precise piano providing a solid framework for Allen’s slinky, warmly melodic lines. It Had to Be You picks up the pace; O Pato is a caffeinated bossa tune with some jaunty, carnaval-esque, chromatic tinges by Allen that Asherie winds down with an unexpectedly whispery, starlit outro. Gershwin’s Our Love Is Here to Stay has some especially choice, impressionistic rubato piano that sets up a mutually relaxed, satisfied groove, echoed even more vividly on the album’s strongest track, Strayhorn’s Passion Flower, Allen reaching back for a Ben Webster bluesiness.
Richard Rodgers’ Have You Met Miss Jones has the duo reverting to assigned roles, picking up on I Want to Be Happy, Asherie’s righthand accents cleverly mimicking a pulsing, staccato horn arrangement. Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams has a sly Brother Can You Spare a Dime reference and a practically imperceptible crescendo; they keep I’m in the Mood for Love on the straight and narrow as Allen goes breathy, with a nice impressionistic Asherie outro. Eubie Blake’s Love Will Find a Way blends smokiness into its ragtime tinges; they close with a brisk but measured take on My Blue Heaven, a terrific choice to end the album on a note that stops just thisshort of breathless. With its thoughtful if not radical rearrangements, solid playing and chemistry between the two musicians, this one’s for the purists from Lincoln Center all the way up to Columbia and probably a lot further uptown as well. And while we’re at it, make that the east side too
Burning Ambulance reviews Ehud Asherie “Upper West Side”…
http://burningambulance.com/2012/02/21/doug-webb-ehud-asherie/
Israeli-born pianist Ehud Asherie‘s latest Posi-Tone release (his fourth) is a collection of standards arranged for piano and tenor saxophone, the latter instrument played by Harry Allen, who previously worked with Asherie on 2010′s Modern Life, a quartet album that also featured bassist Joel Forbes and drummer Chuck Riggs. That disc was recorded in June of 2009, and ended with a duo rendition of Billy Strayhorn‘s “A Flower is a Lovesome Thing”; this disc, possibly inspired by that performance, was recorded in October 2009.
Upper West Side is an extremely conservative, genteel album; it would sound perfect playing in the background of a Whit Stillmanmovie. Asherie’s piano playing is very much in a stride style, reminiscent of Fats Waller, Willie “The Lion” Smith and other figures of similar vintage. Allen’s saxophone sound meshes perfectly with this old-style approach, flowing thick and romantic like Ben Webster, Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins. Everything is very well played, and the album glides smoothly from one appealing, familiar standard to the next—”It Had to Be You,” “I’m in the Mood for Love,” “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,” “Our Love is Here to Stay”…it’s dinner music, basically. Which is fine. Every jazz album doesn’t have to be a tiny revolution. But from a player as young as Asherie (he was born in 1979), this insistence on wearing his grandfather’s clothes, so to speak, is a little disconcerting. It starts to make you wonder if he listens to any new music, or if he has any interest in jazz of the post-swing era. Perhaps he should record something a little more out next time, if only to avoid being pigeonholed as “that old-timey guy.”
JazzWrap on Ehud Asherie’s new CD “Upper West Side” featuring Harry Allen…
Ehud Asherie & Harry Allen: Upper West Side
Tom Reney provides some amazing coverage for Ehud Asherie and his new CD “Upper West Side”…
http://jazztimes.com/sections/jazzalamode/articles/29465-is-ehud-asherie-in-town
Is Ehud Asherie in Town?
Tom Reney blogs about emerging piano talent
Ehud Asherie is one of the musicians I look for whenever I’m in New York, and if he’s not on the road, I usually get lucky and find him at a piano somewhere in town. On a recent visit, I had the good fortune of hearing him two nights in a row, first at the weekly Louis Armstrong celebration at Birdland, and then a solo set at Smalls Jazz Club, where he usually plays the 7:30-9:45 p.m. slot every other Thursday. At Birdland, Ehud joined David Ostwald’s Gully Low Jazz Band to play “Black and Blue,” “After You’ve Gone,” and other tunes associated with Pops; Gully Low’s personnel often changes from week to week, and on this occasion included Wycliffe Gordon and Anat Cohen.
The following night, Asherie was on his own at Smalls for a couple of sets that included material by Fats Waller, George Gershwin, Ellington, Bud Powell, Monk and Leonard Bernstein. Ehud channels the stride masters as well as the modernists, and the lineage that runs from James P. Johnson and Jimmy Yancey to Monk and Errol Garner figures prominently in his work. Not surprisingly, he’s an insightful listener. The first time I met Asherie and mentioned how Dave McKenna had opened my ears to solo jazz piano, he expressed awe not only over McKenna’s two-fisted attack but the subtler internal voicings that are often overlooked by listeners wowed by his rumbling bass lines and dazzling technique.
Asherie, who turned 32 in December, was born in Israel in 1979. His family moved to Italy when he was three, and six years later to New York. In his early teens, Ehud began hanging out at Smalls and studying with the veteran pianist Frank Hewitt, a Smalls regular who’s now deceased. Ehud spent a few years working with Grant Stewart’s Quintet, which is where I first heard him, and he’s recorded with Stewart and Harry Allen, another bonafide keeper of the flame. Asherie and his colleagues explore the seemingly endless possibilities of theme and variation inherent in the 12-bar blues and 32-bar song forms, and they swing like mad. Here’s a clip of Ehud and Harry stretching out on the Vincent Youmans classic, “Hallelujah.” And here’s a solo version of “My Heart Stood Still” which Asherie played at the Arbors jazz party in Florida three years ago; a year later, he recorded this solo collection of New York tunes for Arbors that I’ve been playing regularly on WFCR.
Last week Posi-tone Records released Upper West Side, a duo recording by Asherie and Allen that’s destined to become another chart-topper on Jazz à la Mode. Let’s hope we’re not the exception, for beyond a devoted circle of fans, players like Asherie and Allen and Stewart rarely garner much attention in the jazz press. When I mention their names to writers and deejays, or to players of an edgier bent, they readily acknowledge their mastery but often leave it at that. Rarely are they reviewed by the Times or even mentioned in the paper’s Friday arts listings, yet they’re almost always working in town. But they’re not the kinds of players who are bellwethers of the latest trend, so assignment editors and those for whom straight-ahead jazz just isn’t enough tend to overlook them. One senses that Ehud and his colleagues are not unaffected by this lack of wider recognition, that they’re well aware of the jazz buzz ringing elsewhere. But as Asherie told me recently, “I love the music I play,” to which I thought,”There’s no small reward in that.”
Here’s Ehud at the Kitano Hotel introducing “One for V,” a tune based on his hero James P. Johnson’s “Old Fashioned Love.” Wrap your heart around the freshness of this old-fashioned-ness and savor the choice quote from “Manhattan” he uses to signal the end of his solo.
Asherie will be with Gully Low on the 8th and 15th of this month at Birdland, and he’s back at Smalls on Thursday, February 16 with his trio. Smalls, by the way, is operated by former Hampshire College student Spike Wilner, a fine pianist in his own right whose venue offers the cozy feel of a clubhouse. For many, it’s probably a second home. In addition to its primary function as a performance venue, Smalls operates a record label, provides a live internet video stream for a nominal annual fee, and presents up to three different acts and a jam session seven nights a week in its location at the bottom of a steep flight of stairs at 183 West 10th Street in Greenwich Village.