Phillip Lutz
By Phillip Lutz
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Culture How an Israeli Teenage Jazz Star Emerged
Viewed from the upper-level seats in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Allen Room, Gadi Lehavi cut a slight figure. Seated at the piano, he seemed to disappear beneath a mop of unruly hair. But when he started to play, a giant-in-the-making emerged — and a moment was defined for the millennial generation of Israeli jazz musicians….
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Culture Provocateur Pianist Journeys From Ukraine to Brooklyn and Back
Stuck in his spartan Brooklyn studio on a warm November day, pianist and composer Vadim Neselovskyi seemed a little restless. He had just returned from a six-city tour of Russia and his native Ukraine — a tour on which he and his musical partner, the noted horn player Arkady Shilkloper, packed houses from Moscow to…
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Culture Jewish Sideman Saul Rubin Takes Turn in Spotlight
Despite his easygoing presence, guitarist Saul Rubin reveals a contrarian side when contemplating the commercial zeitgeist. Having gone largely unrecognized for much of his performing life, this master of the musical conversation has, at 54, little time for interplay, musical or otherwise, with the single-minded strivers who populate today’s fragmenting marketplace. It’s no small quirk…
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Culture 4 Under The Radar Jewish Jazz Innovators
Lee Konitz, David Liebman and George Wein — all Jazz Masters of the National Endowment for the Arts — are among a select group of Jewish American cultural figures who, by dint of talent and good fortune, are known to the jazz public and beyond. But others are making substantial contributions to the music, or…
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Culture Israeli Jazz Musicians Make Mark
Some two decades ago, bassist Omer Avital stepped off a plane from his native Israel and into a jazz scene in Manhattan’s West Village that was nearly devoid of his countrymen and their music. It was a lonely time, he said, and when he set up shop in Smalls, a dark and slightly tattered basement…
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The Schmooze The Magnificent Sheva
While Israel has been producing ever more, and ever-more-competent, jazz musicians since a handful of pioneers burst onto the scene in the early 1990s, a new crop of aspirants has appeared, encompassing those who have the kind of style and savvy that at once recalls that past and suggests a future. Here are some to…
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Culture Israeli Piano Prodigy Takes Jazz World by Storm
At the improbably tender age of 15, Tel Aviv pianist Gadi Lehavi can play jazz with the kind of subtlety that would be remarkable at any age. Home-schooled since the eighth grade, he now feels the pull of New York, where his artistic peers are most plentiful and his musical development would probably be most…
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Culture Playing the (Sweet, Sweet) Horn of Peace
David Liebman’s reputation as a conciliator dates back to his days as a saxophonist in Miles Davis’s electronic ensembles of the early 1970s, a turbulent time when cultural assumptions were under fire — and Liebman, whose mind-blowing improvisations and Jewish kid’s mien made a singular impression on Davis’s bandstand, helped build consensus amid the fray….
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