Israel, the jazzy land

Strange, unexpected sounds are blowing out of Israel: jazz.

While the Holy Land may be better known for its discord, a group of young Israeli jazz musicians has emerged in the States, reshaping the American art form and introducing songs and styles from cultures across the Jewish diaspora.

Israeli jazz players have been gigging individually in Philadelphia for years. But the infusion of jazz talent gets a big showing with the four-night Israeli Jazz Festival, starting Monday at World Cafe Live.

The event will showcase Anat Cohen, Downbeat magazine's choice as the best new talent on clarinet last year, and guitarist Roni Ben-Hur, whose 2007 CD Keepin' It Open covers tunes from Thelonious Monk's "Think of One" to the Sephardic melody "Eshkolit."

The festival also features pianist Alon Yavnai, who just finished six years with the Cuban alto saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, and tenor saxophonist Eli Degibri, whose credits include 21/2 years touring with pianist Herbie Hancock.

The influx "is a phenomenon. It's something new," said Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, though he notes that many of the players have lived in the United States for years.

The appearances underscore how global jazz has become. Now in its second century, jazz has grown from humble roots to a concert-hall staple. It has also emerged as a kind of musical Esperanto, a common language that links musicians around the globe.

Israel is one of the hot spots. Notables include Avishai Cohen, who's the former bassist for keyboardist Chick Corea, and pianist Anat Fort, whose CD on the ECM label last year drew wide acclaim.

Now Israel is poised for more bop exports, due to an array of jazz schools such as the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, in Givatayim, where Yossi Regev, a former trombone student at Boston's Berklee College of Music, directs the jazz program. Another favored stop is the Rimon School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, which can feed students directly to Berklee.

Greg Badolato, a native Philadelphian who heads Berklee's international programs, auditions students in 15 countries, including Israel.

"The level of performance is just amazing," he said. "A lot of [Israelis] have amazing classical chops. They're technically very advanced, harmonically very advanced. We often try to figure out what it is. Is it because they live under this duress that makes them more prone to punch it out?"

Ben-Hur, 45, who learned jazz as a child from a Romanian emigre, offers a gentler explanation.

"The culture of Israel has a lot of similarities with the culture of jazz," he said in a phone interview. "It mixes so many different cultures. There's a strong element of rhythm in Israeli music."

Jazz "is open for whatever influences you want to bring," he added. "Some accentuate the Middle Eastern flavors. Some love the South American rhythms. Some like [to play] straight ahead. Jazz has that space, that room to express itself."

Ben-Hur, who came to New York in 1985 and played widely with pianist Barry Harris, can swing from standards to Brazilian music in a flash. Then, too, there's his recorded take of "Eshkolit," an upbeat Israeli pop song from the 1950s and 1960s. Ben-Hur found that it was actually a traditional Sephardic melody from Armenia, and his recording of it tends toward the poignant.

"Sephardic music has a lot of melodies similar to minor elements of jazz," he said. "You listen to a Gershwin song or Irving Berlin, and you hear parts of that."

Few jazz musicians had a busier year in 2007 than Anat Cohen, 32, who passed through both Thelma Yellin and Berklee en route to New York. She released two well-received CDs, Noir and Poetica, performed a week at the Village Vanguard in New York, and won two jazz journalists' awards.

She also played regularly with her quartet as well as the Anzic Orchestra, the hard-bop-influenced Waverly Seven, the Gully Low Jazz Band (also known as the Louis Armstrong Centennial Band), a specialty Brazilian group called the Choro Ensemble, and Sherrie Maricle's Diva Jazz Orchestra, the all-woman big band.

Her newest CD, Braid, with her brothers Avishai, 29, on trumpet and Yuval, 34, on saxophones, is one funky family outing. Her brother Avishai (not to be confused with the bassist) is coleading the Jan. 24 Philly gig.

Anat Cohen says one of her main influences is the late American saxophonist Arnie Lawrence, who emigrated to Israel in 1997 and later established the Jerusalem-based International Center for Creative Music, which welcomed both Jewish and Arab musicians.

"We had spiritual conversations about music," Cohen recalled. "To look inside the music and look for the heart, Arnie was a master of that."

Cohen also plumbs that territory, said trombonist Phil Wilson, who leads the legendary Rainbow band at Berklee (its ranks have included guitarist John Scofield and pianist Cyrus Chestnut). "Anat has that ability to communicate hugely on an emotional level, no matter what emotion is called for," said Wilson, who has also played with Avishai and Yuval Cohen. The whole family, he said, projects a vivid melodic vibe.

Eli Degibri, 29, is another potent communicator, albeit of the straight-ahead kind. "My music is more Western than Eastern, even though I was born in the Middle East," he said. "It always craves for the melody."

Degibri fell for jazz as a young child after seeing a Dixieland band. "They were improvising and smiling the whole time," he said. "I wanted to be that magician. I wanted to learn how you improvise."

Degibri, who also went to Thelma Yellin, got a coveted scholarship to Berklee and by age 20 was touring the world with Herbie Hancock.

Degibri, whose mother is from Iran and father from Bulgaria, was inspired by another Bulgarian emigre, the late Stu Hacohen, who is an important figure in Israeli jazz.

"He was the kind of teacher who spent 10 years in New York playing with everyone, then decided to move back to Israel and spread the love of jazz," Degibri said. "He kept spreading it to everyone."

Pianist Alon Yavnai, 38, was also one of those who learned from Hacohen. Yavnai, who attended Berklee after Thelma Yellin, met D'Rivera, the alto sax player, at a Berklee master class. "I did a concert with him on the spot. I didn't know what we would play," he recalled. "Later he called me and asked me if I wanted to be part of his quintet."

Along with D'Rivera, Yavnai got to play the Brahms Clarinet Trio in A minor with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, in Carnegie Hall. "It was wild," he said. "The education that I had in classical really paid off."