Itamar Borochov
This Brazilian cultural matrix positions Itamar Borochov globally...
Curation
CURATION
-
from this page:
by Title Holder
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
-
Name:
Itamar Borochov
-
City/Place:
New York City
-
Country:
United States
-
Hometown:
Tel Aviv / Jaffa
Life & Work
-
Bio:
Raised in the cosmopolitan port city of Jaffa, now a significant presence on the international jazz scene, Borochov is creating a new musical hybrid - bringing the sacred sounds of his upbringing to a jazz quartet setting.
His latest release Blue Nights (Laborie Jazz 2019) is a nine-track multi-cultural joyride of enchanting lyricism, exotic motifs, anthemic builds and virtuosic expression.
Borochov first heard Sephardic music in his local synagogue and absorbed these ‘maqams’ (modes) of the greater Middle East and North Africa alongside a range of other musical influences, including the Mizrahi and Ashkenazi musical flavors that are his birthright. He began playing trumpet at the age of eleven and immersed himself in the discovery of jazz, inspired by the jazz trumpet lineage of Louis Armstrong, Clark Terry, Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham, Lee Morgan, and Booker Little through to Wynton Marsalis, and citing the influence of Ben Webster for his assured yet wistful warm airy tone. In 2007 Borochov relocated to New York to study at the New School and attend Barry Harris’s weekly workshops.
His deep knowledge of these various musical disciplines is incorporated organically into his original jazz writing, building a bridge between the near-East and the modal styles of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and others.
“This synergetic quest is accomplished with great integrity, demonstrating in-depth knowledge only possible from one who has experienced these traditions firsthand.” – Jazz Magazine
In addition to recording three albums as a leader, Borochov also appears on three albums with Yemen Blues, of which he was a founding member, arranger and co-producer. He has toured across four continents and performed at prestigious venues such as Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, SummerStage at Central Park, Blue Note NY, Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, Bimhuis, Flagey and international festivals including Roskilde, Vitoria, Lviv, Montreal & Ottawa Jazz Festivals, London Jazz Festival, Moscow Jazz Festival, Tel Aviv & Red Sea Jazz Festivals, Jazz à Liège & Shanghai World Music Festival. The Itamar Borochov Quartet was chosen to showcase at WOMEX 2019 in Tampere, Finland.
In 2021 Borochov was commissioned by Brazos Valley Symphony, Texas to compose a suite for jazz quartet and string orchestra - 'Emergence', which he first performed with the orchestra in June 2021. He also recorded a new work composed especially for him by Shanan Estreicher - ‘All You Shining Stars’ for improvised trumpet and string septet, which premiered online in February.
Borochov won the prestigious 2020 LetterOne 'Rising Stars' Jazz Award European edition, which was presented to him in February 2021 by vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater.
Contact Information
-
Management/Booking:
Management
Sue Edwards | Sue Edwards Management
sueedwardsjazz(at)gmail.com
Booking (Germany, Austria, Switzerland)
Catarina Pauli Caldas | Handshake Booking
Catarina(at)handshake-booking.com
Booking (France/Switzerland)
Boris Jourdain | In Vivo
boris(at)invivo.agency
Booking (Belgium/Netherlands/Luxembourg)
Kati Van de Velde | Redcat Artists
kati.vandevelde(at)redcatartists.com
Booking (Czech Republic)
Borek Holecek | Rachot Production
borek(at)rachot.cz
Booking (Scandinavia/Eastern Europe)
Dennis Meentz | Air Artist Agency
[email protected]
Booking (Turkey)
Sinan Nergis | Pasion Turca S.L
sun(at)pasionturca.net
Press (North America)
Matt Merewitz | Fully Altered Media
matt(at)fullyaltered.com
Press (Belgium/Netherlands/Luxembourg)
Inge De Pauw | Stilletto
inge(at)stilletto.be
-
Record Company:
Jean Michel Leygonie | Laborie Jazz
jm.leygonie(at)wanadoo.fr
More
-
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
"His melodies are direct and often plangent, his harmonies and rhythms sturdy and repetitious. His latest album, “Blue Nights,” draws together influences from the Middle East and North Africa with jazz-academy thinking." -Giovanni Russonello, THE NEW YORK TIMES (USA)
"Blue Nights draws from an array of elements including bebop, rock, pop, Arabic maqam scales, the Gnawa patterns of North Africa’s Hausa people, and sounds that Borochov encountered in a local Yemenite-Jewish synagogue in his native Jaffa, Israel. What is surprising is the way the band manages to introduce changes without disturbing the silken flow of the music."-Saby Reyes-Kulkarni, BANDCAMP DAILY (USA)
"Trumpeter Itamar Borochov has spent years exploring creative convergences of jazz and music connected to his upbringing in the multicultural Israeli city of Jaffa. Within those contexts, he's become adept at using quarter tones and other elements of Sephardic spiritual music, along with the North African and Bukharian sounds he heard growing up, in various jazz constructs. Those influences, along with echoes of the Arabic and African-laced world grooves Borochov worked with in Ravid Kahalnai's Yemen Blues outfit, all filter through the trumpeter's stunning third album as a leader." -Jennifer Odell, DOWNBEAT MAGAZINE (USA)
"I was dazzled by the trumpet sound, incredibly full, fleshy, this way of playing on the air that gives all the features of an astonishing fluidity, even in the high register. What comes out of his trumpet is never struck, you never feel the effort: It's velvet.” -JF Mondot, JAZZ MAGAZINE (France) 2018
“Itamar Borochov once again exposes what he knows best: invoking his talents as an assertive melodist and a musician inhabited by a superior mind.” -Alex Dutilh, FRANCE MUSIQUE (France) 2018
“an introspective album with mixed scents of the shores of the Mediterranean.” -Jean-Pierre Goffin, JAZZ AROUND MAGAZINE (France)
“It’s an almost mystical universe.” -Philippe Desmond, ACTION JAZZ (France) 2018
“Trumpeter Itamar Borochov produces a feast of musical exploration on this, his third album, combining influences from across the Middle East and North Africa with a jazz quartet line-up. The result is rich, detailed and engrossing music with an individual sound. I was struck” -Mark McKergow, LONDON JAZZ NEWS (UK)
"The album is simply divine, in the spiritual sense. It touches all our senses with its lyricism, leaving the listeners with a lasting impression. 5 Stars” -Nathalie Freson, UK VIBE (UK) 2018
“An air of hushed reverence had fallen over the audience as the sense of spirituality that informs all of Borochov’s music was at its most palpable. With the tension now released the audience clapped loudly and cheered for more...” -Ian Mann, THE JAZZ MANN (UK) 2018 [Live Review]
"A fascinating, multi faceted album. There’s a profound air of spirituality about the music, which is played by the Borochov quartet with an understated virtuosity and a simmering, low key intensity." -Ian Mann, THE JAZZ MANN (UK) 2018 [Album Review]
“The Israeli trumpeter takes us to a more peaceful world on his new album ‘Blue Nights’ and miraculously gives us comfort. With his new quarter-tone trumpet, he is immersing himself more intensively than before in the world of maqams - the scales that are played in Arabic music.” -Sarah Seidel, NDR (Germany)
"Breaking down traditions and merging them into something new is one of the central ideas of jazz - one that Itamar Borochov cultivates with a remarkable virtuosity and a fantastic feeling for melodies and moods." -Olaf Maikopf, JAZZ THETIK (Germany) 2018
Clips (more may be added)
There are certain countries, the names of which fire the popular imagination. Brazil is one of them; an amalgam of primitive and sophisticated, jungle and elegance, luscious jazz harmonics — there’s no other place like it in the world. And while Rio de Janeiro, or its fame anyway, tends toward the sophisticated end of the spectrum, Bahia bends toward the atavistic…
It’s like a trick of the mind’s light (I suppose), but standing on beach or escarpment in Salvador and looking out across the Baía de Todos os Santos to the great Recôncavo, and mindful of what happened there (and here; the Bahian Recôncavo was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place throughout the entirety of mankind’s existence on this planet, and in the past it extended into what is now urban Salvador), one must be led to the inevitable conclusion that one is in a place unique to history, and to the present:
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil’s national music — the pandeiro — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).
Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil’s culturally fecund nordeste/northeast (where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa — Lagoon of the Canoe — and raised in Olho d’Águia — Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil’s aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.
Three cultures — from three continents — running for their lives, their confluence forming an unprecedented fourth. Pandeirista on the roof.
That's where this Matrix begins:
Wolfram MathWorld
The idea is simple, powerful, and egalitarian: To propagate for them, the Matrix must propagate for all. Most in the world are within six degrees of us. The concept of a "small world" network (see Wolfram above) applies here, placing artists from the Recôncavo and the sertão, from Salvador... from Brooklyn, Berlin and Mombassa... musicians, writers, filmmakers... clicks (recommendations) away from their peers all over the planet.
This Integrated Global Creative Economy (we invented the concept) uncoils from Brazil's sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix... expanding like the canopy of a rainforest tree rooted in Bahia, branches spreading to embrace the entire world...
Recent Visitors Map
Great culture is great power.
And in a small world great things are possible.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix, then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC (I've lived here in Brazil for 32 years now) I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Ex Terra Brasilis
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX