(Review by Peter Jones)
Although far less
well-known than her multi-instrumentalist husband Gilad, Tali Atzmon deserves better
recognition for the quality of her writing and singing on this debut album of
the group that includes both of them, along with Jenny Bliss Bennett on the
baroque instrument the viola da gamba, and Yaron Stavi on double bass. Not
included in the live line-up but heard occasionally on the album are pianist
Frank Harrison and percussionist Enzo Zirilli.
Musically, Talinka
follow a similarly winding path to the one trodden by Gilad over the years;
it’s the sound of people around the world who have had a hard time of it - keening,
remorseful music, but full of beauty. On the sweet, gentle title track, Tali
sings wordlessly in the style of the Brazilian Minas Gerais region. More
typical perhaps is Tali’s composition Losing
Vision, a song about refugees, on which she is backed only by bass
clarinet, bowed viola da gamba and bass. Her other two tunes – When You’re Gone and Every Now And Then – are among the
strongest on the album.
The jazz standards are
not neglected: that icon of passive suffering, Billie Holiday, is represented
by Don’t Explain, whilst a similar
mood is evoked by Gene de Paul’s You
Don’t Know What Love Is. Invitation,
with its sinuous, hard-to-sing melody, sounds Brazilian but is really of Polish
origin, like its composer. Here it’s rendered as a tango (so now we’re in
Argentina), with middle-eastern soprano sax thrown in. We hear the tango again
on Gilad’s composition Four 2 Tango,
with another beautiful, wordless melody, plus some rather alarming vocal
improvisation.
It all sounds like a
recipe for musical chaos, especially with no drummer, so why does it work? The
answer, I think, is that the band doesn’t care about musical, historical or
international boundaries. They play what sounds good.
Peter
Jones
The tour continues
intermittently over the next few weeks, with gigs at Oswestry (3 June),
Felixstowe (4 June), Posk, London (24 June) and Cheadle Hulme (20 July).
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