Anthony Lawson: International Bureau of Double Standards (Must Watch)

Sarah Gillespie Quartet feat. Gilad Atzmon at Black Mountain Jazz 27/05/12

 Reviewed by: Ian Mann  Live Review

The best Sarah Gillespie show I've yet seen, with the emphasis more firmly upon the singer.This was her most convincing and assured performance to date.

Sarah Gillespie Quartet featuring Gilad Atzmon, Black Mountain Jazz, Kings Arms, Abergavenny, 27/05/2012.

Tonight’s performance represented a very welcome return for singer/songwriter/guitarist Sarah Gillespie who last visited the club in January 2011 attracting one of the largest crowds seen at BMJ for some time. This evening’s event was less crammed but the attendance was still gratifyingly healthy with Gillespie and the quartet earning a warm reception for their distinctive music. This was the third time I’ve seen Gillespie appear live and for me this was her most convincing and assured performance to date.

Gillespie seemed to emerge from nowhere in 2008 with her acclaimed début album “Stalking Juliet”, a stunning release that also featured the playing, arranging and production skills of multi instrumentalist Gilad Atzmon, a significant recording artist in his own right. This was followed by 2011’s “In The Current Climate”, another strong collection which cemented Gillespie’s reputation as a skilled and highly literate songwriter. Her current tour comes in the wake of the release of “The War On Trevor”, an EP containing a mini suite of four songs which has recently been reviewed elsewhere on this site.

It’s something of a mystery to me that Gillespie is still only a “cult” artist. Her songs are excellent, she possesses a distinctive voice, striking good looks and fronts a characterful band of superb musicians but to date mainstream success seems have eluded her. Perhaps it’s because her songs are too wordy, too musically exotic and too politically uncompromising. Her tunes have great choruses but they’re a far cry from Coldplay’s anodyne stadium anthems, I guess the great British public just doesn’t like to be challenged too much. Their loss is my gain, one of the joys of being a fan of jazz or any other so called “minority” music is getting the opportunity to witness artists of this calibre performing in intimate situations such as a jazz or folk club. Whilst I wish Sarah every success there’s still a part of me that’s grateful that she’s still playing in venues like this. 

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Ed, David and Glenn

By Gilad Atzmon

http://www.deliberation.info/

A few days ago, in a New Statesman special Jewish edition article, Labour leader Ed Miliband explored his Jewish heritage.

As expected, Ed Miliband confessed that his father, the Marxist historian Ralph Miliband, and his mother, Marion, “raised him to appreciate various aspects of his Jewish heritage. “

But what is Jewish heritage for Ed Miliband, is it the Torah, the Ten Commandment or any particular ethical universal teaching? Not at all, Ed is not a religious Jew and is actually innocent enough to admit that  his “relationship with  Jewishness is complex.”  In fact, it amounts to a combination of suffering mixed with Woody Allen and matzo balls.

On the one hand we follow the standard trail of Jewish anguish and trauma.

“So how can my Jewishness not be part of me?” he says. “It defines how my family was treated. It explains why we came to Britain. I would not be leader of the Labour Party without the trauma of my family history.”

But for Ed suffering is just part of the story, Ed’s Jewishness has some cultural elements in it too:

“My mum got me into Woody Allen; my dad taught me Yiddish phrases, and my grandmother cooked me chicken soup and matzo balls.”

Profound indeed.

Young Miliband is also deeply immersed in Jewish ‘rituals’.  Like Zoey, Dictator Aladdeen’s Wife in Sacha Borat Cohen’s new Hasbara film, Justine, Ed’s new wife, also “broke a glass” under their wedding canopy.

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The United Jewish Kingdom

By Gilad Atzmon

http://www.deliberation.info

The Telegraph reported yesterday that “ministers have criticised Britain’s biggest exam board after pupils were asked to explain ‘why some people are prejudiced against Jews’ as part of a GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education).

Apparently more than 1,000 teenagers are believed to have sat the religious studies test papers, which challenged pupils to assess the reasons behind anti-Semitism.

The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, which set the exam, rightly said that the question acknowledged that “some people hold prejudices” – they probably expected the students to examine the reasons that lead to anti Jewish feelings rather than simply justifying them.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary who is notorious for his pro Israeli stand and his intimate relationships with the Jewish lobby, has managed to produce a particularly lame statement that should disqualify him from any holding any position related to education.

To suggest that anti-Semitism can ever be explained, rather than condemned, is insensitive and, frankly, bizarre,

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The First Jazz Review-“The Wandering Who?”

http://www.thejazzmann.com/

By Ian Mann -TheJazzMann

GA: Ian is one of my favourite Jazz writers, I am delighted to see he liked my book and noticed the bebop in it.

This book is a fascinating insight into what makes Atzmon tick. Yes, it's a polemic but it's a very insightful and entertaining one.

Book Review

Gilad Atzmon

“The Wandering Who?”  (A Study of Jewish Identity Politics)

(Zer0 Books)

To jazz fans Gilad Atzmon is best known as a dynamic multi-instrumentalist playing saxophones, clarinets and accordion with equal brilliance. His music encompasses both jazz and middle eastern influences and from time to time he unleashes his rock and roll persona as a member of The Blockheads. Atzmon is one of the hardest working men in the music business, touring and recording constantly both with his own Orient House Ensemble and with singer/songwriter/guitarist Sarah Gillespie. He’s also an in demand producer and his involvement with any project is guaranteed to enhance the end result and grant it a certain frisson.

Atzmon’s music is inextricably linked to his background. Born in Israel into an orthodox Jewish family Atzmon’s grandfather had been a Zionist terrorist in the aftermath of World War 2. The young Gilad was brought up to believe in the supremacy of the Jewish “race” but soon learned to question this notion, embarking on a course that was to lead to his eventual self imposed exile from the state of Israel and the writing of this book subtitled “A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics”.

The book is a political argument and although little of the content is concerned directly with music the latter subject is still a significant factor in Atzmon’s life choices. He first began to question the values of his family and peers at the age of seventeen when he heard Charlie Parker on a late night jazz programme. “Bird With Strings” was literally the record that changed Atzmon’s life and he later paid homage to Parker with his own album “In Loving Memory Of America”(reviewed elsewhere on this site).

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Lobby, Tribalism and Jewish Identity

For more information about Zionism, Jewish triblism and
 Identity

The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics

The book can be  ordered  on Amazon.com  or Amazon.co.uk

Ariadna Theokopoulos: Gilad and All That Jazz – Reviewed

http://www.deliberation.info/

Gilad and All That Jazz is an outstanding documentary by G. Kolahi, which presents in only a little over one hour Gilad Atzmon’s evolution as a jazz musician, thinker, writer, humanist, ethicist and, frankly, phenomenon that in a relatively short time has managed not only to become known as one of the best saxophone players on the jazz scene today but also to stir passions and heated debates all over the world on the subjects of Palestinian rights and Jewish identity politics.

There are great jazz musicians and there also are well-known writers and advocates of human rights, but not in one package and not with the quality of a lightning rod that Gilad seems to have.
His book “The Wandering Who?” in which he develops the concept of Jewish identity politics and dissects the inherent problems for Jews and the cultures and groups they interact and collide with has attracted praise form distinguished academics and intellectuals like Meerscheimer, Falk, Pilger, Boyle, Mezvinsky, Qumsiyeh, Bricmont and others, but also activated a vilification response of rarely seen aggressiveness on both sides of the Atlantic, including the accusation of “anti-semitism.”

 Watch trailer

The film does not quote the by now well-known accolades of the former but does give plenty of footage to the latter, which amounts to giving them enough rope to stridently hang themselves. Some of them provide a measure of comic relief, like the self-professed pro-Palestinian rights BDS zionist who says Gilad’s ideas are “dangerous for young Palestinians” and that…

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Welcome to Racist Israel

At a demonstration in south Tel Aviv demanding the immediately expulsion of all non-Jewish African asylum-seekers, a lone Israeli woman who does not agree with the rest of the crowd is shouted down with ferocity and told that she deserves to be raped

Harry Stubberfield Interviews Gilad Atzmon

http://medwayjazz.btck.co.uk/Intrerviewswithmusicians

 Harry Stubberfield:  what was your first impression of the British jazz scene when you arrived here in 1994?

GIlad Atzmon: I was obviously very impressed. I guess that British panthers do not realise that the scene in this country is pretty massive 

H:  You, have a great admiration for ‘Bird’, was he the musician who inspired you, and light the flame of jazz in your soul.

G: Totally, it was Bird who showed me the light, and it is Bird who manages to refuel me with aesthetic enthusiasm, when my creative energy falls behind.

H:  One of your many projects over the last few years has been ‘Parker with Strings’ Do you think this is one  of his best periods

G: It is certainly the Album he loved the most. I think that Bird with Strings is one of the most incredible  fusion albums. I think that it is a spectacle of American artistic might. The freedom and brilliance of the individual Bird flying around within the context of accurate lush strings played beautifully and accurately.
H:  “In Loving Memory of America” was highly praised by the British music press, What part of or  period on American music gave you the idea off this album, or was it something else initially.

G: I really wanted to work with Ros Stephen after we completed a Tango Siempre’s Tour and we thought that a tribute to Bird would excite us both. We were correct. It did and it excited many others. It made a very successful album and some very successful tours.

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GILAD AND ALL THAT JAZZ Gala night @ The London International Documentary Festival

GILAD AND ALL THAT JAZZ

http://www.lidf.co.uk/film/gilad-and-all-that-jazz/

Venue: Soho Hotel

30 May 2012 7:00 pm

World Premiere Watch trailer

To buy ticket click

Golriz Kolahi | United Kingdom | 62 mins

“Gilad and all that Jazz” is a portrait of one of the modern era’s best saxophonists; a man who has stolen hearts with the sounds of his sax and angered many with his political activities.

A gentle giant, warm, charismatic and somewhat shy, Gilad Atzmon is a complex character. Born into an Israeli, pro-Zionist family and serving briefly in the first Lebanon War of 1982, Gilad had a dramatic turnaround; he quit the army, picked up his sax and exiled himself to London, declaring himself an enemy to the Israeli state. Since then he has produced some of the modern era's greatest Jazz albums, and collaborated with the likes of Ian Dury, Paul McCartney and Sinead O' Connor.

In music he is a 'feisty improviser' as one critic put it, comparing him to the likes of Charlie Parker. In his political and philosophical ideas, he is blunt and outspoken. His ideas on Israel and "Jewishness" have upset many people. He has enemies from every camp; the left, Pro-Palestinians believe he is feeding the Zionist machine with his anti Semitic ideas and that he is damaging the cause of the Palestinians. The right, pro-Zionists are upset by his “anti-Semitic” rhetoric and his growing popularity within the Arab world.