QANTAR is OMER AVITAL’s dream quintet. Since forming in 2016, the improvisations they created around Avital’s compositions jelled in an immediate and uncanny way, as if the musicians were traveling along the same tightrope, aloft and daring, with an incredible solidarity held together by a bond that went far beyond performing the notes and letting go in the solos.

 

That bond seems to have been formed from their individual careers criss-crossing so many times since leaving Israel. Indeed, all are Israeli expatriates, all living in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, all then hanging out at Omer’s sharing dinner and Turkish coffee.

There is a friendship these musicians enjoy which definitely penetrates the performances.

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This shared history, even though years apart, imbued this quintet with the key to Avital’s music: his ability to bring the various rhythmic and harmonic vocabularies underpinning 20th and 21st century hardcore jazz expression to flow with a polyphonic attitude and musical multilingualism.