There are some who feel that contemporary jazz has lost its way, somewhat. They say that it has become overly cerebral and rigidly structured almost, in fact, like classical music. Indeed, as an Israeli conductor recently pointed out to me, the latter appears to be evolving into freer climes so, perhaps in that respect, the disciplinary tables are turning.
However, there are still some acts out there that do display something of the original joie de vivre and unfettered spirit that gave birth to jazz over a century ago. The Nigun Quartet, which will be recording a live album at the HaEzor venue in Tel Aviv on August 21 (8 p.m.), certainly works off a deeply soulful and joyful base.
Ofer Schneider says it is more about the feel of the music among the band members and what they impart to the audience than virtuosity, rhythmic complexity, or chord progressions.
“We don’t do concerts, or give jazz shows,” he says, referencing the titular musical format. “The nigunim (hassidic melodies) are not [originally] sung on a stage. Hassidim get together and sit around a table, and sing the nigunim in order to free themselves of all the everyday things – the bank accounts, the media, Kaplan Street [weekly anti-government protests], Gaza, and the news and all that.”
Schneider, one of the founding members of the group which has been around for six years – that makes for impressive longevity in the jazz band domain – doesn’t initially come across as your run-of-the-mill jazz bass player. With his flowing peyot (sidelocks), beard, and stock hassidic garb he looks like he would far more at home in a beit midrash (study hall) or yeshiva or some other place of Torah study.
As we continue to chat, together with the band’s young pianist Moshe Elmakias – over here on a furlough from his doctoral studies in New York to perform with the band in a string of gigs lined up over the next month or two – it transpires that neither Schneider nor Nigun take the tried and proven track to their craft. “We don’t want to have the regular setting where we play music in a hall, on a stage, and the audience claps after each musician finishes their solo and after each number,” Schneider states. “We want it to be more of a gathering where we all get closer to each other.”
That, for the Nigun guys, who also include saxophonist Tom Lev and drummer Yosi Levy, means getting as many people as possible in on the musical-spiritual action. “That’s why we invite people to sing with us,” says Schneider. “And we tell stories.”
The art of storytelling
Storytelling is a prerequisite for any artist. Besides presenting the visual and/or sonic fruits of their creative labors, there has to be some personal message, some narrative, permeating the work. Schneider and his pals have plenty of raw material to feed off. “I experienced that myself when I replaced a bassist for a show that was connected to the Holocaust,” he recalls. “The rabbi who moderated the evening told the audience the story behind each nigun, and then we played them.”
That is now part and parcel of the way the Nigun Quartet goes about its layered onstage business. Schneider proffers a highly evocative and emotive sample that the audience in Tel Aviv and, possibly, others here and abroad may very well witness over the next few months.
With all the anti-Israel hype rife around the world right now, these days few local artists are getting opportunities to strut their stuff out there. Remarkably, Nigun is down for a show at the prestigious Porgy & Bess jazz venue in Vienna on September 3, followed by a gig in Budapest the next day. A week or so later they will be back In Israel to play at Bet HaAmudim in Tel Aviv, with a couple of shows lined up for Germany in October, before putting in an appearance at the Red Sea Jazz Festival in Eilat on November 15.
The story Schneider told me left me open-mouthed and thoroughly moved. The accompanying chart is called “Ashreinu” (“Happy Are We”) which will be performed after the bass man regales the crowd with a jaw-dropping vignette that concerns the faith-fueled obstinacy of a group of religious Jews designated for a concentration camp gas chamber.
Interestingly, neither the bassist nor pianist hail from strict jazz territory. Elmakias started out as a classical musician before his vocalist older sister introduced him to the joys and freer-roaming spheres of jazzy endeavor. “I was just a kid when I went to watch her shows and was just riveted to what the pianist was doing,” he recounts. “I wanted to do that too.”
For his part, Schneider, who was born into a secular family and, only much later, found purpose in life after opting for a religious lifestyle, felt out of place musically too. For him, it was a matter of finding cultural and spiritual congruity.
“I was a problematic jazz musician,” he chuckles. “I was never a jazz artist at one with what I was doing. I was always uncomfortable with the music and always griping.”
It wasn’t about the core of the discipline per se. It had more to do with what he was playing and how that connected with where he was doing it.
“There was this discrepancy. We were playing music that, really, was not linked to this place, or to the audience. It existed in a kind of bubble.” Schneider doesn’t mince his words. “The audiences weren’t coming in droves. The music did not relate to the audiences that did come. They clapped after each solo because that’s what everyone does. It’s weird. The pieces weren’t in their right places.”
For Schneider, drawing on more religious, spiritual seams was the way to go. “I loved the music, but it wasn’t in its rightful place.” Neither was Schneider, culturally and, eventually, geographically. “Jazz comes from America. I was playing the music here which didn’t belong here.” He duly got himself over to New York, and spent a couple of years mixing it with the folk who had been born and bred in the “right place,” before returning here, shortly after 9/11, and dropping music-making entirely.
He and his wife made ends meet through an innovative ecological enterprise before Schneider felt the inexorable call of jazz tugging ever more persistently at his kapota tails. In the meantime, he had adopted a hassidic observant way of life. “It seemed I couldn’t get away from jazz,” he laughs.
That paved the road to the quartet. “Nigun, for me, is the answer,” he observes, intentionally using the Hebrew word “t’shuva” which translates as “answer” and also implies a claiming or reclaiming of a Torah-guided way of living – as in the term “hozer b’tshuva” attached to a secular Jew who becomes religious. “It all goes together,” he posits. “Playing with Nigun is also good music, and also playing it in its proper home.”
Schneider says it is a win-win state of affairs. “This music is in its home and it connects with the people, the place, and the soul, and with my Jewish studies. When I find a nigun I study the philosophy and teachings of the person who composed the tune. It all works.”
Israeli jazz musicians are well-received the world over. And with Jewish jazz giants such as George Gershwin, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and Stan Getz, to mention but a few, firmly ensconced in the discipline’s annals there is no reason why the likes of the Nigun Quartet shouldn’t maintain the Jewish jazz flow.
For tickets and more information: https://www.nigunquartet.com/ and https://haezor.com
