There were times when the great American drummer Hamid Drake was a frequent visitor to Tel Aviv’s Levontin 7 club, run by Drake’s soul body, free jazz sax player Assif Tsahar (as the title of their two volumes of their duo), or recording with another Israeli free jazz sax hero, Albert Beger.
Israeli double bass player Asaf Shchori works closely with Tsahar and plays in his quartet, and he and pianist Milton Michaeli play in Beger’s quartet. They anticipated Drake’s last visit to Israel in June 2023 and prepared for months for this unique live recording session, which, obviously, took place at the local free-jazz base, Levontin 7.
Drake is a musician who charges every performance with a deeply spiritual and adventurous, communal approach and his distinctive voice, and this recording demonstrated this again. The album begins with Shchori’s stormy homage to the great American double bass player, «For Wilbur Ware», entwined with Sun Ra’s iconic «We Travel the Space Ways». Drake provides clever, solid drive on Shchori’s piece, but opens Sun Ra’s song with an expansive, swinging reggae pulse, taking Shchori and Michaeli into an uplifting dance with him, cementing the trio’s immediate, organic chemistry and inclusive sonic vision.
Shchori’s «Yasmin» began with an intense eruption but soon gravitated into a lyrical, hypnotic bass groove, beautifully abstracted by Michaeli and ornamented by Drake. Drake offered Michaeli and Shchori the opportunity to interpret the 1970s reggae and dub classic, «None a Jah Jah Children No Cry», by Jamaican Rastafari Ras Michael and his band, The Sons of Negus, and the trio transforms it into a 20-minute spiritual and mediative free jazz odyssey, with a highly addictive slow-cooking groove, that eventually morphed into aclever rhythmic interpretation of George Gershwin’s classic «It Ain’t Necessarily So», led by Michaeli. Michaeli’s own «We Can Dance» concluded this performance with a touching, openly emotional ballad that enjoys a gentle dance-like groove.
To paraphrase one of Seinfeld’s iconic quotes: everybody loves Hamid Drake, and Universal Butterfly offers many reasons to love this great musician.
Eyal Hareuveni
Milton Michaeli (piano), Asaf Shchori (double bass), Hamid Drake (drums)
