The African-American experience is rightly regarded as the bedrock of jazz but the contribution of America’s Jewish immigrants was also considerable.
Clarinetist Oran Etkin, who moved from Israel to New York with his family when he was four, acknowledges the influence of perhaps jazz’s most famous son of Jewish immigrants on his third release as a leader.
Etkin’s ‘re-imagining’ exposes Goodman’s catchy, swing era melodies to the tempestuous harmonic winds of contemporary jazz, in a way that will surely shock die-hard Goodman fans – but that’s not who this record is for.
You don’t hire pianist Sullivan Fortner, vibraphonist Steve Nelson, and drummer Matt Wilson if you’re on the revival treadmill. But the spirit of Goodman, and of the Klezmer music that inspired him, is alive and well and living in Oran Etkin.
