Time Out / New York
Issue #574, Sept 28, 2006

Omer Avital

Years from now, when folks are remembering the early days of the West Village jazz haunt Smalls, bassist Omer Avital’s name will be as synonymous with the club as Bill Evans’s is with the Village Vanguard, and Thelonious Monk’s is with the original Five Spot Cafe. It’s no secret that Avital’s groups helped put the collegial space on the map in the mid-’90s, and it almost seems like kismet that the club reopened in 2005 just as Avital returned to Gotham from a three-year stint studying composition in his native Israel. Both of his recordings—the new The Ancient Art of Giving and the recently issued ten-year-old sessions on Asking No Permission—were recorded there and are available from the label that bears the Smalls imprimatur.