By Ric Bang
Buy CD: Organic
Ehud Asherie was born in Israel in 1979, lived in Italy for six years, then at age 9 moved to New York City with his family. He took piano lessons but didn’'t get serious about music until he discovered jazz at Smalls, in Greenwich Village.
He was only 20 when he became a featured artist at that club. Since then, although he has toured worldwide, the Big Apple remains his musical home.
For this album, he has switched to the Hammond B3 organ. The quartet includes guitarist Peter Bernstein, alto saxman Dmitry Baevsky and drummer Phil Stewart. Half the tracks are Asherie originals; the rest are covers of standards by Leonard Bernstein ("Tonight"), Sonny Rollins ("The Stopper"), Green and Kahn ("Coquette") and Jobim ("Favela").
Asherie's style on the B3 is much lighter than that used by many jazz organists; he achieves a wonderfully grooving sound and never overwhelms his sidemen.
This group really swings, producing the kind of straight-ahead jazz that would be great to share with like-minded friends for an entire evening. So, until you can make that trip to New York City, and the clubs where Asherie plays, you’ll have to make do with this lovely album.
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