About twenty
years ago, when Eli Degibri was attending Berklee School of Music, his teacher
commented on a solo he’d played during a casual session on Wayne Shorter’s “Yes
Or No.” “He stopped the music,” Degibri told DownBeat magazine in 2011. “He
said, ‘You play old in a new way.’ In this one phrase, he basically said my
motto.”
Keep the
playing-old-in-a-new-way mantra in mind as you listen to Soul Station (October
5 via Degibri Records), the 40-year-old tenor saxophonist’s eighth album. If
the title evokes a sense of déjà vu, that’s because Degibri conceived the date
as a tune-for-tune “remake” of an iconic 1960 album of that name for Blue Note
Records led by tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley (1930-1986) with a hall-of-fame
rhythm section of master practitioners of swing and blues-oriented expression —
pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Art Blakey.
Fifty-seven years later, Tel Aviv native and resident Degibri and his rhythm
section of Israeli twenty-somethings capture the soulful earthiness of those
proceedings, while imbuing the repertoire with their individualism and
articulate it in their own manner.
On the
album-opening “Remember,” for example, Degibri and company sustain the “perfect
dancy-funky groove” of the original, but create a fresh pathway by using
composer Irving Berlin’s original changes in lieu of what Degibri calls Mobley’s
“perfect reharmonization.” On Mobley’s “This I Dig Of You,” long a jam session
staple, he plays a transcription of Wynton Kelly’s original solo on soprano
saxophone in unison with the gifted pianist Tom Oren. Degibri counter-states
Mobley’s medium-up-swing interpretation of “If I Should Lose You” by playing it
as a ballad, adding his own touch by reharmonizing the changes. He alters
Mobley’s up-tempo rhythm changes line, “Split Feelings,” by blowing on soprano
while also reharmonizing the bridge of the melody.
Degibri
concludes the proceedings with his sole original, “Dear Hank.” “I tried to get
into Hank’s head and imagine how he’d be composing if he was alive today,” he
says. “It’s a true and pure tribute to my hero. Soul Station made a huge impact
on me at a very early age. Every time I think about Hank, every time I imagine
his sound, I feel happy and good—his sense of sound and melody is embedded in
my music.”
Known
colloquially to his generational peer group as “the middleweight champion of
the tenor saxophone,” Mobley deployed authoritative chops to tell lyrical
stories that danced around the rhythm, constructing long, complex, harmonically
adventurous lines that he resolved with cat-like elegance. On the homage, Degibri
packs a heavyweight wallop with impassioned, ascendant, muscular, ever-melodic
declamations, rendered with what his long-time colleague Aaron Goldberg
described as a “refined, creative jazz sensibility.”
Ron Carter
got Degibri’s message early, and recommended him to Herbie Hancock, who hired
him in 1999 for what would be a 30-month stint performing repertoire from
Hancock’s GRAMMY® Award-winning Gershwin’s World album. He further refined his
artistry as a member of drum master Al Foster’s group from 2002 until 2011, and
as the leader of bands that included such internationally acclaimed musicians
as Goldberg, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Ben Street, Jeff Ballard, Kevin Hays, Gary
Versace, Gregory Hutchinson, and Obed Calvaire, resulting in seven
well-regarded recordings of primarily original music, including Cliff-Hanging.
After moving
back to his homeland from New York in 2011, Degibri — who is the artistic
director of the Red Sea Jazz Festival — began forming bands culled from
Israel’s large pool of young hardcore jazz oriented musicians. He’s worked with
the musicians on Soul Station — pianist Tom Oren, bassist Tamir Shmerling, and
drummer Eviatar Slivnik—for the last three years.
“All my guys
knew all this music, because in Israel Soul Station is taught in school,”
Degibri says, explaining why this quartet of Millennials renders the repertoire
with the seasoned flair you might associate with masters who came of age during
the aftermath of World War II. “The kids in Israel know their tradition. They
don’t feel it’s not cool to play 4/4 rhythm changes or to play the blues. “I
think it’s nice for my audience to hear where all the music came from. At the
end of the day, I like to play standards. Making them sound good and fresh is
important to me. Why is it acceptable to remake a classic Hollywood movie but
such a faux pas to remake a classic jazz record?
“When I came
to New York, I didn’t write. My only goal and dream was to be able to play and
to speak the language, and the only way to that was by playing with great
musicians and playing standards,” says Degibri. “I’m very proud of my
compositions, but this album is also a way for me to free myself and say, ‘I’ve
done that.’”
Eli Degibri
· Soul Station
Degibri
Records · Release Date: October 5, 2018
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