OF THE MOMENT

Gil Livni Tribute to Nat King Cole, Savyon, Israel, 2026.

A very rewarding evening from a beautiful band assembled by guitarist and vocalist Gil Livni, with Amikam Kimelman on saxophone, Yonatan Riklis on piano, Ram Erez on bass and drummer Yonatan Rosen, performing at the Savyon Cultural Center.

You can see more images from the evening here.

The phenomenal pianist and vocalist Nat King Cole could not have received a finer, more swinging, and more heartfelt tribute. Gil's leadership, playing and singing — as well as his arrangements — reminded me of just how influential Nat King Cole was on my earliest conceptions of good music.

J.R. Mitchell 'Walls of Africa' Suite, Albuquerque NM, 1983.

Among the works that percussionist, composer and teacher J.R. Mitchell was most proud of was his 'Walls of Africa' Suite for Jazz Orchestra.

This rolling, swinging, expansive composition was made possible by a grant from New York State's wonderful 'Meet the Composer' program, and debuted at the Bruno Walter Auditorium of Lincoln Center in October, 1982.

The 21-piece debut Orchestra included 'new jazz' luminaries like Byard Lancaster (reeds and flute), Odean Pope (reeds), Joe Locke (vibraphone), and of course Mitchell himself (drums), alongside some adventurous New York classical musicians.

JUST A FEW MONTHS later, J.R. used his teaching residency at the University of New Mexico to assemble another performance of the Suite, heard here:

The Walls of Africa Suite, J.R. Mitchell, Composer, UNM Jazz Orchestra Performance, February 1983

'Walls of Africa' was an ideal conduit for J.R.'s eclectic, emotional and sometimes challenging expressions, as it remains on rehearing today. It's an interesting listen, as it moves from full-throated classical avante-garde to high energy jazz ensemble. Its movements bubble forth: European themes, African themes, American themes, African-American themes -- an eclectic yet collective musical statement about the period during which it was composed and performed.

On this American Independence Day weekend -- when artists are for the most part lauded and promoted strictly according to how well they can fit into some niche -- I think of my friend J.R., a fiercely-independent musician, and wonder if he would have had the opportunity to produce such an expansive and eclectic statement today.

He certainly would have had the motivation, I know that!

Yuval Cohen Quartet, Beit HaAmudim, Tel Aviv, May 2025

If you've been here, you'll know precisely where this image was captured -- like a picture taken at Buckingham Palace or Point Lobos.

Beit HaAmudim ('House of the Columns' in English) is probably the most storied jazz club in Israel over the last 15 years. With respect to other clubs here, no other venue is as well adapted to bringing this music so directly to an audience. No other venue puts a listener in the players' laps -- literally.

Intimacy is part of the magic of this music, its history and its future.

When you think about it, the most significant and lasting developments in jazz music (and also in our community) have taken place in venues just like Beit HaAmudim, where playing is elbow-to-elbow and the vibrations are unamplified and visceral.

I'm thinking of the Village Vanguard, the Five Spot, the Onyx, Mintons, the original Birdland, the Lighthouse and the Keystone Korner. In Israel, Beit HaAmudim is right up there with them.

So when a club like Beit HaAmudim closes its doors (which it is set to do at the end of May), it invites a sadness that can pause one's breath. Located in the beating heart of one of Tel Aviv's most historic and lively neighborhoods, Beit HaAmudim feels like it has been there forever -- at least for those who love this music and its players. How can we even imagine the jazz landscape in Israel without it?

Beit HaAmudim didn't happen by serendipity. It took owners who were absolutely dedicated to supporting the performers and keeping their venue open in spite of impossible commercial odds. My deep gratitude to Eran Kol and Yael Hadani -- together with their staff since 2011 -- who have built and sustained Beit HaAmudim with their tenacity, wisdom and love.

As performances count down to a precious remaining few this week, word is that there are plans to open a new Beit HaAmudim. I know I'm in good company when I say that I sincerely hope it will be soon.

Gary Smulyan Quartet with the Jerusalem Camarata, Tel Aviv, December 2024.

Magical moments are few and far between these days, but I'm happy to report that I was witness to an evening filled with them.

Saxophonists Gary Smulyan and Robert Anchipolovsky, together with pianist Katia Toobool, bassist Alon Near, drummer Shay Zelman and crack players from the Israel Camarata Jerusalem conducted by Mark Wolloch presented a lush, vibrant concert combining jazz quartet with chamber orchestra performance.

You can see more images from this gorgeous evening here.

Gary's Back in Town, Tel Aviv, Israel, December 2024.

Reggie Workman, Rehearsal in Philadelphia, September 1986.

Anyone following the American music form that is affectionately called Jazz over the course of a few decades comes to understand that it is a multi-layered, multi-sourced, multi-colored phenomenon. It is exceedingly difficult to define 'The Music' either in cultural terms or in technical terms — though some listeners certainly try.

This is because Jazz not only defies labels but perennially trounces its own conventions too, making it a treacherous object for adoration. The most basic nature of this music is about constantly evolving your story, from within a tune, from within a performance and from within a lifetime.

Peel away layer after layer of Jazz music and you'll discover that its underlying energy is not the breath blown through an instrument, nor the thump of a finger on a string, but its instantaneous genesis by the human spirit.

Many musicians understand this of course, but few are gifted enough and fortunate enough to fully live it, let alone teach it to others.

Reggie Workman is one such musician. As my image above (captured at rehearsal for a John Coltrane birthday concert) reveals, you only need to be in the room with him for two minutes to feel his deep dedication and his gift.

.

AT THE TENDER AGE of 87, active as ever, Reggie and his long-time partner and collaborator Maya Milenovic are creating a documentary about his music, together with many other colleagues and friends.

Immortal: The Musical Crusade of Reggie Workman will provide an opportunity to hear first-hand about the musical, social and political development of what we call Jazz, its unique language and its special role in preserving the story of the African American experience.

Right now, your own contribution to Reggie and Maya's Indiegogo campaign is needed to complete this extraordinary and important project:

The funding campaign runs through the end of the month and all donation amounts are welcome. In these days of turmoil and doubt, be a part of something that makes a real statement — and will make a real difference for this and future generations!

Reggie and Maya, take your time, On the Music!

Boy on Bomb Shelter, Northern Israel, April 1994.

There was a time in 1994 when it seemed like Israel and its neighbors were on the road to real progress: the Oslo accords had been signed, the 'reborn' Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat returned to govern the West Bank and Gaza, and for a brief time, the nation of Israel once again breathed the fragrance of peace.

With my five years in the country, I keenly felt the accompanying excitement and euphoria. For me, it was the natural culmination of my own personal dreams for Israel. Hiking with friends around the country's beautiful back hills, valleys, forests and deserts, camera in hand, I began a photographic essay which I also felt was an expression of the times, capturing images of the ubiquitous bomb shelters I found everywhere.

On one hike in Israel's northern region, walking through Kibbutz Misgav Am, an agricultural community which sits literally meters from the border with Lebanon, I spotted this boy checking out the majestic view from atop one of the eclectically-decorated kibbutz shelters.

AT THE TIME I thought it was a quaint image with a strong sense of pathos and also a touch of nostalgia — after all, I reasoned, like so many other shelters this would soon become an artifact of Israel's past. But in 1994, I was still new to the Middle East.

Today this image has a brand new narrative. Almost all of the members of Kibbutz Misgav Am are currently refugees from their homes, waiting to return after the Israeli Army puts an end to Hezbollah's incessant rocket attacks and the far too realistic threat of murderous cross-border raids. For anyone who remains on the Kibbutz, this shelter is more important than ever. Not quaint or nostalgic in any sense.

Exactly one year ago today in the south of Israel, residents living near the neighboring Gazan terror state were viciously attacked, raped, burned, massacred and kidnapped by Palestinian Hamas terrorists. On October 7th, 2023 alone, an estimated 1,584 people were killed, 3,300 were wounded and 251 were taken hostage (101 people still remain hostages in subterranean Gaza today).

There are ubiquitous shelters and safe rooms in our southern locations as well, but they did not provide much protection. In retrospect, Israel was 'still fighting the previous war', unprepared for the Hamas pickup trucks, motorcycles and paragliders that breached our expensive high-tech border, carrying some 6,000 terrorists wielding automatic weapons, grenades, RPGs, knives, axes, machetes and other low-tech killing tools.

Ruins, Ancient Jewish Temple, Kerem Ben-Zimra, 1997.

Sabbath Table for 240 Missing Persons, Tel Aviv, November 2023.

Gathering by thousands to heighten the world's awareness of the approximately 240 people who were kidnapped on October 7th from southern Israeli communities to Palestinian Gaza by Hamas terrorists.

Orange Bliss, Binghamton, New York, September 1997.

Resistance - Street Protests, Hadera, Israel, July 2023.

Today is a sad day, and an apparently necessary day in the history of our young and historically-liberal nation.

Today the extreme-right governing coalition in Israel's parliament used the brute power of their majority to take what appears (for many of us) to be a nose dive into an authoritarian form of government, in spite of broad, vocal and sustained opposition from minority lawmakers, a large percentage of its citizens, and scores of leading judicial, national security, diplomatic, economic and business community members.

THIS IS NEW for little Israel, which throughout its first 75 years of hard-won (and miraculous) independence, created governments that have nurtured and championed a progressive democracy, focused squarely on the multi-colored sensitivities of its citizens. Today's vote formally shifts this often-fragile governing balance into the conservative realms of religious autocracy and fundamentalism, and with considerable force.

This vote now prohibits the Israeli Supreme Court from using a somewhat esoteric judicial measure called 'reasonableness' as a means to overturn government appointments and decisions, a Court practice that has been used sparingly but dramatically in recent years. The first likely outcome of this change will be the firing of the independent Israeli Attorney General, who has been a thorn in the current government's side since its election. A second likely outcome of the change will be the installment of the charismatic religious leader (and twice-convicted tax felon) Arieh Deri as the government's Minister of the Interior and Minister of Health. Other possible outcomes of the change include such fateful policy decisions as outlawing the current Palestinian Authority and ruling that Jews who move to the West Bank are, by law, guaranteed more rights than native Palestinians (i.e., apartheid).

To say simply that this change was opposed by some Israeli citizens is the understatement of 2023.

For seven months straight, hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of concerned Israelis have regularly left the comfort of their homes, screens and cars for street corners and intersections, protesting the governing coalition's step-by-step program to disembowel the country's judicial system.

There is no other spontaneous national movement in Israel's history that can be compared to this protest, in breadth, scale or effectiveness.

It appears that it will take every ounce of our nation's legendary strength, soul and courage to avoid translating this political shift into a potentially devastating civil war. At this moment, there is mainly only anger and disgust on both sides of the political divide.

THE FALLOUT FROM today's vote has yet to be seen and felt, but it is hard to be optimistic about the results. The predictions from many corners of the Israeli and global community are apocalyptic: massive shifts of capital away from Israel's high-tech 'startup nation'; resignations en masse by members of the Israeli military reserve forces; a dramatic reduction in American diplomatic and economic support, a rainstorm of new claims by anti-Israeli political, legal and civil groups; unprecedented waves of emigration by young people, progressive families and citizens with liberal mindsets – the list goes on. We shall see.

Anyway you turn it, today's vote 'winners' are also the losers – in fact, our elected leadership's inability (and perhaps disinterest) in arriving at a realistic compromise solution on judicial system reform has made all Israelis the losers.

The need to rise above the inflammatory rhetoric has never been more urgent. We need to take a breathe and focus on the basic motivations for this government's race to weaken the Israeli judiciary system and ask ourselves the question: 'Why?'

And we need now more than ever to proactively engage fellow Israeli citizens in 'the other camp' and ask: 'Why?'

The answers we hear – if any – are not likely to move us into their camp. But as long as we continue to ask 'Why?' we also continue to see our adversary as our brother or sister, a human being with thoughts, feelings and needs not unlike our own, and we can sustain Israel as a people of compassion and shared possibility in place of surging irrational violence and bloodshed.

Seeking Symmetry, Catskill Mountains, NY, June 2023.

Archie Shepp, The Jazz Center, New York, 1985.

Saxophonist Archie Shepp remains a powerful, original voice in American music. As a musician, author, poet and teacher he has helped to build a new foundation for contemporary, uncompromised Black American culture -- a culture which has evolved over the last 50 years to thrive well beyond the lens of the dominant white American culture, and also without a need for often-misguided white promoters.

That's not to say that Archie Shepp creates music that is insular or closed to cultures outside his own. Quite the opposite is true, in fact.

ARCHIE'S MUSIC WILL will raise a few of your hairs, challenge a few of your conventions, and give a few of your angrier thoughts some free sparring time. It will also show you what swing is all about, as well as the true roots of the Blues.

I consider myself very fortunate to have heard Archie's timeless music so deeply, to have been able to experience and capture his performances, to have met and spoken with him for a time, and even to have served with him on the board of Music Inn Studios, a non-profit calling of our mutual Philadelphia-born friend, J.R. Mitchell.

I'm not going to try to tell you anything more about Archie, except perhaps to let you know that today is his birthday.

Here are just a few links to start hearing and learning about Archie Shepp from his ground-breaking, counter-culture work in the late '60s to his National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master recognition in 2016: Archie's mind-blowing take on Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Lady (1968); the beseeching Hipnosis (1975); his classic composition Steam live from the Montreaux Festival (1976); Archie in his seminal duo arrangement with pianist Horace Parlan on the spiritual Trouble in Mind (1986); his wonderful funky big band arrangement of another wailing classic 'Mama Too Tight' (2012); and finally Archie's NEA Jazz Master 2016 Biography.

Ugly Beauty,* Carmel Foothills, Israel, March 2011.

Not everything in this world is meant to be beautiful. But some things are beautiful just because, 'ya dig?

Demonstration, Haifa, Israel, March 2023.

The End Game

SEVERAL TIMES NOW, I've started to post about the unprecedented national crisis in Israel and the increasing liklihood of a showdown between the sitting government and the judicial branch, which would result in a paralyzed and prone country.

Each time I felt I had written something that could bring some value, the situation here changed, rendering my words valueless.

Along with this, the sheer volume of writings, opinions, predictions, warnings, etc., is so dizzying that I could post a dozen links to as many effective pieces written by other citizens as concerned as I, and also far more qualified to provide a worthy analysis.

So, let me just cut to what I see as the End Game.

THE END GAME FOR the governing coalition creates a State which eliminates the independence of its judicial system, to benefit the will of governing politicians. Of course, they want to do this for a specific reason; simply stated, they want to pass laws which cannot be challenged by the Israeli Supreme Court.

The unwarranted speed, deafness and vicious forcefulness that the governing coalition has used to advance their legislation is damning and depressing evidence that an unprecedented blow to Israel’s democratic system is indeed their End Game.

If Israel had a constitution, a bill of rights, or some other formal basis for protecting our system of government and our citizens from such concerted corruption and abuse, today’s national scenario would not be as frightening. But that is not the case. And this End Game empowers the governing coalition to usurp the traditional guardian role of the Supreme Court and to pass brutal, blatantly political laws which change the very nature of the system. For example, a law to revoke the rights of non-Jewish citizens to vote in national elections. Or a law to delay future elections until the desired outcome will be certain.

Grim imaginings? Unfortunately not. There already have been attempts by some extreme religious members of the current coalition to implement their power, for example, a proposed law to arrest women who arrive at Jerusalem's Western Wall inappropriately dressed. The statements just this month by the Minister of Finance Betzalel Smotrich about his desire for the Israeli military to "burn down" the West Bank Arab town of Hawara could, sadly, find legal support by some convenient new law that promotes the extreme Right's anti-Palestinian agenda.

Their End Game does not stop with just dismantling the judicial system. Another likely target for change will be mandatory military service for Israeli citizens – long a source of ideological discomfort by the orthodox religious community. The list goes on: the State’s recognition of civil marriage, the acceptance of Reform Jews as full Israeli citizens, the right for workers to strike or even to demonstrate, the right to perform abortions, the adoption of children by same-sex couples – these and many other present-day norms could be overturned with ease under the governing coalition’s proposed changes.

"After these laws pass, there will be nothing that limits the power of the government.” -- Yuval Harari

In a recent television news interview, world-renowned Israeli historian and author Yuval Harari also talked about the End Game. He urged, that instead of examining and arguing over the minute details of the coalition’s proposed judicial legislation package, “People should focus their attention on one question only: ‘What will limit the power of the government?’ ”

“Until today,” Harari added, “in Israel we’ve used a jumbled-up combination of basic laws, together with the legal power of the Supreme Court to tell the government ‘No.’ After these laws pass, there will be nothing that limits the power of the government.”

“It’s not important what is going on in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s mind right now. Who knows what will pass through his mind next year, or what will pass through the mind of whoever follows him? We need to be able to thwart the government’s ability to destroy our freedoms. What the coalition is trying to do is create a political atomic bomb that may not be used right away, but can still be used in another year, or two years.”

It's little wonder that hundreds of thousands of Israel’s active and highly vocal citizens have been organizing and demonstrating using every legal means – including the streets – for 3 months now.

BUT THERE IS A SECOND End Game to consider – that of the opposition (current members of Israel’s parliamentary minority).

Well, actually, the opposition doesn’t have an End Game, nor any real plan to help prevent the State of Israel from sliding into an autocracy (or perhaps a theocracy) fashioned by the extreme religious Right. As they have in the past, the opposition is relying on existing laws and political norms to serve them. That is the nature of democratically-inclined societies. But these very laws and norms are now the targets of the Right’s attack.

Opposition leaders have decried the ruling coalition’s End Game, laid every parliamentary roadblock they can, supported the unparalleled public protests we are seeing, and called determinedly for a halt to the shamelessly one-sided legislative process to enable a broader, more thoughtful national dialog over the proposed judicial reforms.

Yet they have not created an alternative End Game. Their request to return to a respectful discussion – whatever that means in Israel – is not an End Game.

On this day, as the democratic fabric of Israel woven over 75 years unravels before our eyes, we can plainly see the flaw that lurks behind the legal crisis now consuming our country. It is the failure of our nation to have produced an organized, broadly-based, formal set of democratic laws and civil rights – a Constitution.

As Yuval Harari concluded in his interview, “In the new situation that has been created we will need stronger defenses for Israeli democracy. The current basic laws and the Supreme Court will not be enough. We need to find other methods…I hope that this shock will bring us forward to a better situation, that it will move us toward a stronger democracy.”

A national Constitution must be today’s End Game for Israel.

Without it, Israel's institutions and its citizens will continue to be tossed about by self-serving, short-sighted, corrupt and incompetent governments, politically frail Supreme Court rulings, and egotistical, power-focused politicians.

And with tonight's protests enflamed more than ever in the face of another ill-motivated action by the country's Prime Minister, it's honestly difficult for me to see how Israel will succeed in reaching such an important redefining moment.

___________