MILAN MILANO ITALY | VIA MONTENAPOLEONE PEOPLE & EVENTS | PEOPLE & EVENTS IN VIA MONTENAPOLEONE

International critics have compared him to the great maestros of yesteryear, such as Charles Mingus, and those of today, like William Parker. “Extraordinary” is how the New York Times described him “… an impetus that is reminiscent of Bird, with melodies that range from Jimi Hendrix to a Suite in G Major for Cello by Bach.” “A style that is immediately recognised,” according to the Village Voice and “simply excellent, a creative… fantastic jazz” for the Tracking Angle.
Omer Avital, 37, leader of the Band of the East, is a successful emigrant: he arrived in New York in his early twenties, along with his friend Avishai Cohen, and after a few years of grunt work, and having made his appearance at the court of the pianist Herbie Hancock he successfully began his soloist career. “I reunited my quintet,” he says, “because I was trying to express my oriental roots, with oriental having a very broad meaning, through a musical assembly of musicians who came from nations from the Middle East all the way through to Eastern Europe”. With the exception of Joel Frahm, the brilliant saxophonist from Wisconsin, all of the other members of the Band of the East - Omer Klein on the piano, Avishai Cohen on the trumpet and Ziv Ravitz on drums – are Israeli, even though it has been some time since they all transferred to the U.S.A., where in just a short time they have achieved notoriety in the Big Apple’s brilliant jazz scene.

Raised in Tel Aviv by a Moroccan-Yemenite family, Avital made a name for himself in New York in the early 1990s, becoming one of the most effervescent animators of the new jazz scene and working with a number of famous names, including Roy Haynes and Brad Mehldau. He is a refined composer and arranger, he has distinguished himself as an instrumentalist of rare talent through his fascinating language which is characterised by extreme vigour and drama and he has also developed his own original, energetic and imaginative style, which is as open to be-bop and blues as it is to the Latin and Arab ethnic influences that he was exposed to during his formative years.

credits:.
TEATRO degli ARCIMBOLDI
viale dell'Innovazione, 20
20126 Milano
tel:. +39 02.641142200

OMER AVITAL
booking: +1 347 8795579
booking@omeravital.com