Dee Dee McNeil, Musical Memoirs Blog
Israeli tenor saxophonist, Arnan Raz has created a CD based on a game he and his childhood friends once played. They took a single piece of paper and one person wrote a sentence in private, folded the paper to cover that sentence, then the next person wrote their sentence. They folded the paper to hide the new phrase and the next child added their sentence. At the end, ‘Chain of stories’ was created. The page was unfolded and read aloud. It had become one coherent essay. Focusing on sound, instead of words, Raz has attempted to produce his ‘chain of stories’ as an album concept. Thus, his composition titles trail like a formation of birds flying zig-zag across the back of his CD jacket. Arnan Raz explained:
“When I wrote the title song for this album, I experimented and wrote one short phrase each day without overthinking it. … After a few weeks, I had an entire song written.”
The title tune is played at a comfortable, moderate tempo and has a strong melody that does not appear to be written using distinctly different phases. Surprisingly, the haphazardly pasted music chords and melodies, strung together like random thoughts, do create a lovely melody. I think this experimental saxophonist came up with a pretty decent composition named for his childhood game. It is punctuated by Eyal Hai on alto saxophone and Dani Danor slapping his drum licks in support of a funky undertow. Tamir Shmerling adds sporadic solos on bass in between the harmonic horn punches. I found the fade on this first ‘cut’ to be a bit long and uninspired. Perhaps pianist, Daniel Meron, could have soloed on top of this repetitious horn-play. Meron opens “Her Story” the very next composition, with his piano playing in a very classical style. Arnan Raz has composed all of the music on this album. Although I commend him as a composer, I found this second tune to be repetitious and the arrangement uninspired. On the other hand, the third composition of this CD titled, “We Used to Fly” was well written and once again, further showcased the talents of Daniel Meron on piano with the tenor saxophone of Raz and the alto sax of Eyal Hai flying above the rhythm section like wild birds. All improvisational solos were inspired and expressed freedom as they unfolded. The tempo throughout this production was moderate and a more diversified rhythm arrangement on the compositions would have elevated this recording. Other favorite original tunes on this CD are “Ella,” “Two Worlds One Soul” and “Soul Talk”.