Oded Tzur - Isabela

Exquisite, tender lyricism, composed and improvised, is punctuated by carefully controlled crescendos of full-throated vocalized passion. It is an intoxicating, uplifting combination from an idiosyncratic stylist leading a marvellously empathetic band… a perfect little masterpiece. — Chris May, All About Jazz

Oded’s fourth album as a leader is a culmination of his entire musical journey in the form of a love letter. After releasing Here Be Dragons in 2020, the bandleader began a composition project that would draw on the concept of Raga, the Indian system of melodic structures, as a platform for musical portraiture. Each of the compositions on Isabela highlights a different aspect of the same Raga, while the title track itself is its centerpiece.

Indian musicians often describe a Raga as an abstract personality, even a god or a goddess, with which the musician connects at the moment of playing. Like a person, a Raga is an infinite set of possibilities rather than a strict narrative: a world in which countless melodies can exist, all pointing back to the same source.

During the composition process Oded also delved deeper into the Blues and considered the space his own music occupies on the axis between American and Indian classical music. His rediscovery of Delta Blues artists inspired in him a personal interpretation of the genre as a type of Raga, its own universe that’s at once infinite and unmistakable. Isabela is the saxophonist’s attempt to weave a thread through the fabric of his musical influences, a fabric that is uniquely diverse, by telling the story of one individual person.