Omri Ziegele Where’s Africa

March 24, 2022

That Hat
Intakt CD 375

Although a Jazz footnote, fleeing Apartheid, the place exiled South African improvisers like Abdullah Ibrahim and the Blue Notes could gig regularly was in a Zürich club. Swiss piano doyen Irene Schweizer picked up some of that freewheeling style from them at the time, and as part of  the first incarnation of Swiss-Israeli Omri Ziegele’s Where’s Africa trio passed on the feeling to that saxophone and flute player. The trio is now completed by keyboardist Yves Theiler, who has recorded with David Meier and young drummer Dario Sisera, also in the Radar Suzuki band.

Yet That Hat is more than a kvela-Jazz session, since  the mercurial Ziegele, who has worked with sound explorers like Urs Leimgruber, likes to model many chapeaus. Since he vocalizes, with Theiler creating roller-rink-like patterns behind him on “Woke Up On The Other Side Of My Heart” the impression is of hearing a pseudo-David Byrne-World Music track. Luckily popularization only extended so far. With the saxophonist’s sometime fruity tones, cymbal accents and light slaps from the drummer and the keyboardist’s swells and shudders, effervescent motion is preserved elsewhere, with space left for individual expression. A couple of the tracks demonstrate the three can create at a slower pace with drum rumbles and keyboard jiggles preserving the beat as nai peeps or reed flutters outline melodies. Despite the unthreatening gentleness of the themes, concentrated linear movement isn’t lost. Blues inferences and Caribbean lilts sometimes amplify or replace the South African motifs; but no one music supersedes the others.  More exploratory fare isn’t neglected either. Although saxophone riffs are cleverly harmonized with keyboard output that ranges from trebly electric piano licks to tremolo organ-like runs, on tracks such as “You Know, I Don’t Know, Nobody Knows” and the title tune, tracks such as “You Know, I Don’t Know, Nobody Knows” and the title tune Ziegele extends his playing with doits and split tones. Elsewhere darker reed gulps and gasps make common cause with drum shuffles or back beat foundations

Overall, the trio creates a highly rhythmic, appealing CD. But in future the band must ensure that its pivots to entertaining on some tracks don’t descend to elementary.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Back Home 2. That Hat 3. Mother Is Always On Time 4.  Carpatian Folk Song 5. Dying With The Wind 6. Woke Up On The Other Side Of My Heart 7. You Know, I Don’t Know, Nobody Knows 8. Sunflowerpower

Personnel: Omri Ziegele (alto saxophone and nai flute); Yves Theiler (keyboards) and Dario Sisera (drums)