Photo Caterina Di Perri
Oded Tzur Quartet
Oded Tzur – tenor saxophone
Nitai Hershkovits - piano
Petros Klampanis – double bass
Cyrano Almeida – drums
Israeli saxophonist and composer Oded Tzur was born in Tel Aviv in 1984. He studied jazz and classical music at the Thelma Yellin School For The Arts and at the Jerusalem Academy, followed by Indian classical music at the Rotterdam World Music Academy - he was a student of bansuri master Hariprasad Chaurasia. Inspired by this, he developed an original technique that expanded the microtonal possibilities of the saxophone he named Middle Path, presenting his achievement in numerous academic institutions around the globe.
Since 2011, he has been living in New York, where he soon founded his quartet. He released the first two albums, Like A Great River (2015) and Translator's Note (2017), for ENJA Records, and the next two, Here Be Dragons (2020) and Isabela (2022), for ECM Records. Petros Klampanis plays double bass on all albums. The drums were first played by Ziv Ravitz, and then by Jonathan Blake, while the piano was first played by Shai Maestro, and later Nitaj Heršković.
The jazz portal All About Jazz declared him "the new sensational colossus of the saxophone", the Japanese magazine CD Journal called his ensemble "the Coltrane quartet of the 21st century", the British Jazz Wise called the debut release for ECM an "instant classic", and the critic Thomas Conrad noted that "Tzur's progress feels unbroken yet undergoes myriad subtle modulations, like undulations in a rolling river." In addition to tracks from previous albums where he explored the links between Indian raga, jazz and Delta blues, at the first concert in Belgrade, he will present several new compositions from his upcoming album My Prophet released by ECM Records.
Support: Embassy of Israel in Serbia