By Daniel Arimborgo
Music lovers will want to add the new album “Phrygianics,” by the Spiros Exaras World Jazz Ensemble, to their CD collection. Coming from a small independent label, anyone interested will have to go to a Greek record store in Astoria, or order it from the Internet.
The six member band’s CD has a Middle Eastern element to it. Some pieces, like the title cut “Phrygianics” and “Do You Hear Me?” seamlessly transit from Middle Eastern wailing vocals into jazz, and are intermittently accompanied by band member Lefteris Bournias’s Greek clarinet, which completes the light Mediterranean spice to the album’s sound and flavor.
Exaras’s soft string picking in Deer’s Leap, the third song on the album, evokes just such a vision. Thrace Bop has a nice, uppity, playful beat accompanied by Bournias’s talented clarinet playing at the start.
Born in Thessaloniki, Greece, Exaras studied classical guitar at the Athens Conservatory of Music, later switching to jazz. He has worked with Randy Brecker, Harvey Swartz, Mark Egan, Bert DeCoteux and members of Spyro Gyra.
Now a resident of Astoria, Exaras is thrilled to be working in New York.
“I think it is every musician’s dream from around the world to come to New York because it is the musical mecca,” he said at a record release party last week.
The band’s five other members make an eclectic mix comprising one other Greek, three Americans, and one Armenian. Keyboardist Henry Hey has performed with Harry Belafonte, Joe Locke, and Mark Ledford. Electric bassist Matthew Garrison has worked with both Pat Metheny and John McLaughlin, whom Exaras also claims were big influences on him — influences which can be clearly heard on the album put out by the independent label Laughing Buddha Records.
There are two percussionists: American Gene Lake and Armenian Arto Tuncboyacian, who provides a North African sound via bongos, and also does the vocals.
“It really catches jazz in a Mediterranean flavor,” Laughing Buddha president and founder Mike Barry said. “And with Spiro it was just natural for him to have that flavor,” he said, quickly adding, “You don’t have to be a jazz head to appreciate who’s on this album.”
Barry said he enjoys signing new groups who don’t fit neatly into the music industry’s standard style molds. But the music, true to its smooth nature and improvisational solos, has that easy listening quality that doesn’t demand total, rapt attention, meaning it can be listened to during times of contemplation and meditation. Like all good music it grows on you with each re-listening.
The band will tour the US, Canada and Europe this summer and fall.
Phrygianics is on sale at Greek Music Video, located at 25-50 31 Street in Astoria, and can be request ordered from Tower records, or online at www.cdbaby.com and www.amazon.com.
