Gilad Atzmon

Inno­cents abroad in York ! As part of the late music fest­ival the National Centre for Early Music put on Gilad Atzmon and the Ori­ent House Ensemble — a jazz gig.  And jazz it was — sax, key­board, bass, drums — melodic, driv­ing, mov­ing to con­tem­por­ary blasts of noise.  What I didn’t know, and should have picked up from Gilad’s insist­ence that he wasn’t going to make any polit­ical remarks, was that he is a prom­in­ent anti-Zionist — jazz musi­cian first, he says — but nov­el­ist and polemi­cist too. Good to have him here — pity I hadn’t done my home­work so I could appre­ci­ate him in the round.  Music impress­ive — but con­cert stuff — not sure how it would go down in the liv­ing room.