NEW ALBUM: BABEL GUMBO

 

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“Babel Gumbo” (Inhale-Exhale II)  is the new album of Amir Gwirtzman’s solo project, and follows his first album, “Inhale-Exhale.”

BABEL GUMBO is a musical journey crossing cultures, times, continents, religions, spiritual concepts, styles and genres. Babel is symbolic for this mosaic of influences pretty much as Gumbo is a Creole dish which is a result of a mixture of various and different cuisines and spices from around this planet.

Amir, who grew up in Israel, which is a cultural microcosmos melting pot of  ancient-modern,east-west, religious-secular, Jewish-Christian-Muslim etc, absorbed from childhood all of these rich “ingredients.”

Babel gumbo is a metaphor for our globalized, complex world, and it continues the artist’s concept of “Inhale-Exhale,” which means that almost everything is performed on saxophones, clarinets, flutes, horns, pipes and various reeds & woodwind instruments of indigenous peoples/cultures, all played and performed by Amir, with some special guest artists from different countries who took part as well.

Most of the songs and compositions are original. Some are based on folk songs from different origins and traditions, sometimes “subscribing” or “talking” with one another, such as 3,4..&! which is a musical conversation between a famous Korean folk song and an Israeli children’s song. There are also 2 songs based on famous Jazz standards that Amir’s interpretation has rearranged, twisted, and  brought into his personal inner world, thus creating a “multi-cultural big-band.”