All That Jazz

February 25, 2007 at 8:46 pm | In Art & Cinema, Music |

I guess Jazz is the universal music. Smalls is one my favorites, and so’s Caspi- so this is a twofor…

Playing Matti Caspi in New York

By Ben Shalev

Matti Caspi does not know this, but many of his songs are being played at New York Jazz clubs. There are three reasons for this: First, several dozen young Israeli jazz musicians have become active in New York, growing in number and status. Second, an Israeli jazz musician aged 20 to 40 who hasn’t grown up on Caspi’s music and doesn’t admire the singer-songwriter is yet to be found. Third, there is something about the New York experience that makes recently arrived artists want to connect to their roots more deeply than ever.

And the result: “Binyamina Days,” “Eternal Covenant” and “Shalom Aleichem” are being heard at clubs like Fat Cat, the Jazz Gallery and Smalls.

“Only in New York did I realize how much I love Caspi and how much playing his songs, which I listened to as a child, makes me happy,” says guitarist Gilad Hekselman, 24, who has been in New York for two and half years. “When you are in a place where they don’t play those songs on the radio, you are hit by how beautiful they are, by how much they are a part of your roots. And when I play them at a club in New York, I feel it interests American jazz fans,” he says. Caspi’s “My Second Childhood” is the final number on Hekselman’s debut disc “SplitLife,” which was recently released by the New York-based Smalls Records.

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