Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Hafez Modirzadeh

Driving in this morning, I heard a track from this new album by saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh on the Stanford station. I had three immediate reactions: Man, is this cool! And man, is that piano out of tune! And man, that out-of-tune piano sounds strangely fantastic on those tone clusters!

When the DJ said it was Vijay Iyer on piano, I knew the tuning must have been intentional, and sure enough, it was.

Highly recommended. Something new in the tradition.

4 comments:

  1. Its not exactly like the album you posted but Ethiopiques Vol 4 by Mulatu Astatke is very cool and smooth. Also its got an odd George Clinton psychedelic feel about it.

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  2. Back to the post, I like Hafez's stuff. I haven't heard too much of his work but every time I listen to it, it intrigues me.

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  3. It's interesting which "world music" traditions meld well with jazz. Not always the ones one would expect.

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  4. Bossa nova melds well. Afrobeat does quite well.

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