Assif Tsahar - Solitude (Hopscotch)

I remember some discussion of this record on Bagatellen, but it never got a proper review. For me, it was one of the best discs of 2005, not to mention the Hopscotch label’s crowning achievement to date.

The crystalline opening of “Love Is” doesn’t so much set the mood—nothing so trivial!--as portend a mysterious journey; many openers function similarly only to be let down by the rest of the piece or by succeeding tracks. Not so here! Tsahar’s clarinet is exquisite, buoyed by the pan-Eastern ripples and alien bells of the always-stunning Tatsuya Nakatani, whose range of dynamics and timbre on this disc borders on frightening. The string work, a quartet from which the individualities of Katt Hernandez and Audrey Chen often stand out, can also be extremely unified. Check out the title track for exemplary quartet interplay, but also for some of the most movingly nostalgic music on the disc. It somehow breathes 1930s air, primarily due to Tsahar’s Humphrey Bogart tenor, sincere without being overly smooth, until Nakatani’s gong flips planet momentarily—American guilt usurped by Korean Han?

Whatever the underlying emotive states, and they shift throughout, this is a well-executed and extremely moving disc. The recording is also first-rate, space and detail in perfect symbiosis, making for a really satisfying listen. I hope to hear more from this configuration, sooner rather than later.

~ Marc Medwin