Bagatellen.com
Feb 18, 2007

Omer Avital Group/ Room To Grow
Smalls Records SRCD-0020
by Derek Taylor

Mingus seems an easy reference point for Omer Avital’s sextet, an improvisatory ensemble that held court at Smalls during the late Nineties and fortunately fell under the recording rubric of label owner Luke Kaven. A sense of orchestral drama and a sometimes flamenco-tinged attack are traits in common between the two bassists. I also hear affinities to Adam Lane in Avital’s embrace of an egalitarian musical ideology that seems amenable to the complete history of jazz. Taped in performance at Smalls in early 1997 the three track set presented on Room to Grow stretches to over an hour, but still seems to shuttle by. Avital’s “Kentucky Girl” occupies a third of that temporal space, but contains just two discrete horn solos, one a fiery fulmination from alto Myron Walden, the other a contemplative-to-ecstatic turn from tenor Greg Tardy. Both are showstoppers.

Avital’s bass is a constant rudder, moving from foreground to fringe and sustaining a stabilizing presence with Joe Strasser’s dynamic drums that nullifies their outnumbered ratio to the horns. His frequent and felicitous solos evince a guitar-like phrasing and agility and make attractive use of amplification. Cole Porter’s “It’s Alright with Me” and Coltrane’s “26-2” receive atypical readings and Avital invests each with a plenty of twists and turns, weaving his febrile bass lines through strings of rapturous reed solos and cunningly reconfiguring the latter standard as a samba-injected march. Walden’s unaccompanied improvisation in pole position on the former piece bleeds pathos and his band mates muted exclamations of approval only add to the semblance of a preacher and pulpit perspective. Statements from tenors Charles Owens and Grant Stewart and Tardy on clarinet follow, once again parsed by lively interstitial interplay between Avital and Strasser. Perhaps most promising in the wake of listening to this exciting concert date is the realization that Kaven’s Avital tape trove is far from tapped out.

~ Derek Taylor

From Bagatellen http://www.bagatellen.com/archives/reviews/001597.html