PIANIST OMRI MOR & YOSEF GUTMAN TAKE FLIGHT ON THE IMMERSIVE, IMPROVISED ALBUM MELODIES OF LIGHT
LIVE DUO IMPROVISATIONS BY MOR AND OFRI NEHEMYA (DRUMS/PERCUSSION)
BECOME FULLY REALIZED COMPOSITIONS
EDITING BY COPRODUCERS YOSEF-GUTMAN LEVITT (BASS) AND GILAD RONEN (ARRANGER)
Available from the new Jerusalem-based Soul Song Records
(upcoming releases to feature Gilad Hekselman & Ralph Towner)
Omri Mor, a pianist and composer of Iraqi and Argentine heritage born in Be’er Sheva, Israel, is proud to present Melodies of Light, his new release for Soul Song Records. It’s an album that proves how remarkable creative breakthroughs can come about from near happenstance. Mor had just finished recording bassist Yosef-Gutman Levitt’s Soul Song, a deeply affecting encounter with renowned guitarist Lionel Loueke and seasoned drummer Ofri Nehemya (Shai Maestro, Avisha Cohen). The group had the luxury of a spare day of studio time, and Levitt, founder of Soul Song, faced a decision on what to do.
Consulting longtime colleague and coproducer Gilad Ronen, he floated the idea of a fully improvised duo set between Mor and Nehemya. It would be something sparse and straightforward, piano and drums/percussion, drawing on the effortless rapport of these two fine players (heard to great effect on Levitt’s 2022 trio debut Upside Down Mountain). Levitt and Ronen offered guidance: they’d ask Mor to imagine his wedding day, for instance, but in different imaginary locales. “Now play that!” they’d suggest. “Yosef and Gilad were conducting the atmosphere of the recording,” Mor recalls. “Although we improvised, their presence was very much felt. I didn’t talk at all, I just placed my hands on the keys and let it happen.”
The result was a double album’s worth of material to parse. Levitt began to add bass, in essence learning these spontaneous creations as tunes, bringing them into a more group-oriented space. He added percussion, played by Joca Perpignan. He called in Yo’ed Nir on cello to augment the haunting piece “Hamotzi,” and a number of others as well. He and Ronen then edited extensively, knitting together a sequence of completed tracks that became Melodies of Light.
“You can hear the puzzle of my musical world,” Mor reflects, “which contains Western classical music, North African music, Arab-Andalusian music, Gnawa or Afro-Moroccan music, Arabic music, klezmer. One of the things about being a musician in Israel, especially Jerusalem, you need to know different genres of music. We have diasporas of a lot of countries, Yemenite, Moroccan, Iraqi, and it's obvious that you will play all sorts of ethnic music.” (And how fortunate for us listeners, as it births projects such as the Assala Trio, Mor’s riveting collaboration with Gnawa guembrist/vocalist Mehdi Nassouli and Algerian-born drummer/vocalist Karim Ziad [Zawinul Syndicate, Nguyên Lê].)
“Mi Yiten Li,” the leadoff track, is “a Moroccan melody taken from classical Arab-Andalusian music called al-Āla,” Mor explains. “In Jewish tradition it became a piyyut, meaning there was a Hebrew text created for this melody to sing in synagogues. This is an arrangement of that traditional music.” For “Movement 7: Wedding Song,” Mor remembers, “I came up with a melody based on a 7/8 Yemenite rhythm called dasa, which has a traditional association with happy times.” “Movement 16: Lament,” which strikes a contrasting note of slow contemplation, is the only precomposed, notated piece of the set. There’s a great variety here, a sense of breath and freedom, whether Mor engages Nehemya with a steady groove, a loping odd meter or something slower and more ethereal. Precision comes into play, but never rigidity. What we hear is the sound of two musicians in the zone, creating anew under circumstances not foreseen.
ABOUT OMRI MOR
Omri Mor studied classical music at Jerusalem’s Robin Academy and Andalusian music from Algiers under the guidance of Nino Bitton. His first inspiration and role model was Oscar Peterson. His performance credits sum up his wide musical range, from jazz artists Arnie Lawrence, Avishai Cohen (bass) and Stefano Bollani to rock stars like Berry Sakharof and Micha Shitrit, from Algerian pianist Morris Al Medioni and Nino Bitton’s Maghreby Orchestra to the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra with lyricists Rabbi Haim Louk and Lior Elmaliah. Mor followed his debut album It’s About Time with Assala, featuring the aforementioned Assala Trio.
ABOUT SOUL SONG RECORDS
Yosef-Gutman Levitt launched the Soul Song label based on the core principles and values that guide his artistry: “The goal is to create music, and to create a label that stimulates others to do the same — to make their soul song. To create music that’s intimate and honest, improvised, and recorded together. What makes music good is a profound honesty, luminous creativity and a stripping away of notes and gestures that are alien to the artist’s “soul song.” That’s the work I want to do with the artists on this label. It’s important that the music is inspired by something higher, and I want to work with artists who are interested in getting to that place.” Following Levitt’s Soul Song (featuring Lionel Loueke) and Omri Mor’s Melodies of Light will be releases with eminent guitarists Gilad Hekselman and Ralph Towner.