Friday, August 17, 2018

OKAY TEMIZ – Oriental Wind (Sonet, 1977)

Instrumental
International relevance: ***

Drummer Okay Temiz is one of Turkey's best known jazz musicians and was a part of the exceptional Swedish/Turkish band Sevda in the 70's. He released a couple of albums featuring Swedish musicians, including this one.

As with Sevda, this is jazz with a Turkish twist. The musicianship's extraordinary, with bass man Palle Danielsson, pianist Bobo Stenson and sax player Lennart Åberg (Rena Rama and others) being the Swedes in the lot. Temiz himself is one of the few that can play a drum solo that aren't merely a pee break to the listener; his playing is marvellous, he always keeps the momentum going through sharp attention without ever losing the direction. He truly leads the band, focuses each of the musicians' efforts into one collective, transcendent performance. It's a true joy to listen to ”Oriental Wind”, and other Sevda fans ought to be just as delighted as I am by it. Simply excellent.

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