Mandala

Unlikely musical combinations sometimes turn out to be very attractive musical combinations. Take jazz and Middle Eastern music, for example. The two seemed an unlikely combination when Duke Ellington combined them on "Caravan" in 1937, but that gem became a standard — and uniting jazz and Middle Eastern music became a common practice thanks to John Coltrane, Yusef Lateef, McCoy Tyner, and other influential modal explorers of the '60s. Thankfully, Middle Eastern music hasn't outworn its welcome in jazz, and it is a crucial part of what Russian tenor/soprano saxophonist Oleg Kireyev does on Mandala. Parts of this 2004 recording are best described as introspective post-bop; other parts have an aggressive rock edge and are relevant to fusion. But either way, Mandala has a strong Middle Eastern influence — and it should be noted that not all of the modal inspiration on the 37-minute disc is Middle Eastern or Arabic. There are East European influences as well, including Moldavian and Balkan music. Modal music is not only Arabic, Jewish, Turkish, North African, Persian/Iranian, and Indian music; some forms of East European music also involve modal/scalar playing — so there is no reason why Kireyev and his colleagues (who include Valery Panfilov on electric guitar, Victor Matoukhin on electric bass, Ildar Nafigov on drums and Ndiaga Sambe on percussion) should not bring both Middle Eastern and East European influences to Mandala. Speaking of Eastern Europe, most of the musicians on Mandala were born in the former Soviet Union; the exception is Sambe, a native of Senegal. This excellent CD is enthusiastically recommended to world jazz enthusiasts.