Nadav Haber is an Israeli tenor sax player-educator who began his career as a free jazz musician but shifted his musical activity into Ethio-jazz. He leads the local band Mercana which arranges traditional Ethiopian and Israeli songs into Ethio-jazz, and releases dozens of albums independently.
Mifgash – meeting in Hebrew – documents a live session of Haber and Mercana’s bassist Elad Muskatel (a disciple of Reggie Workman) at Nika Studio in Tel Aviv in July 2024. Haber wanted this meeting would distill the essence of the moment, clean as much as possible from any «cultural layer» and lead the musical performance into mirroring the the raging unconsciousness, especially in this painful and stressful era.
The first piece, the 47-minute «The Lake», borrows its name from Arnold Schoenberg’s impressionistic Farben (colors, subtitled Summer Morning on a Lake). This sparse and atmospheric soundscape attempts to imagine the slow, sensual process of surrender to the lake’s chilling water, as a spiritual act of realizing simultaneously emptiness and minfulness. The melodic and soulful veins of Haber on the tenor sax, clarinet and flute gravitate sporadically this piece, but the fragmented and ethereal layers of synths and other percussive sounds are far from substantiating this long, philosophical piece with a meaningful character.
The second piece, the 30-minute «The Shadow», was inspired by the Jungian concept of The Shadow – the self’s emotional blind spot, the part the ego does not want to acknowledge, and only interaction with the shadow can heal problems between individuals and within groups and organizations. The playing of Haber and Mustakel is channeled towards their own shadows. This piece works much better and offers an enigmatic and quiet drone that contrasts the still sporadic but lighter and warmer playing of Haber with the darker, brooding synth sounds of Muskatel.
Eyal Hareuveni
Nadav Haber (tenor saxophone, clarinet, flutes, harmonica, Ethiopian krar, kalimba, percussion), Elad Muskatel (electric bass, synthesizer, percussion)
