Gilad Hazan’s fusion of rock, house, and arabic music captivates at Oud Festival

Gilad Hazan wowed the audience at the Jerusalem Oud Festival with his genre-defying performance, blending Arabic music with house beats, rock, and jazz.

Gilad Hazan is a virtuoso oud player. That much was patently clear from his Jerusalem International Oud Festival concert at Confederation House. And he ain’t too bad on violin either.

But what sets him apart from the vast majority of his fellow instrumentalists is his unapologetic embrace of a broad sweep of genres and styles that feed into his core Arabic music line of work. His in-between number repartee included some entertaining biographical details, and we learned that, before he set clearly gifted hands to oud and violin, he was into very different sounds and rhythms, such as house and trance.

A blend of genres

Rock music, surely, was also a major player in his early evolving consciousness, and he led the quintet’s melodic attack with gusto, reeling off frenetic arpeggios balanced by delicate interludes that suggested shades of harmony – an element that is traditionally eschewed by Arabic music practitioners.

Yisrael Dayan upped the harmonic ante on keyboards, displaying jazzy tendencies betwixt and between, but, naturally, the show’s mainstay was a multilayered tapestry of Arabic music dialects and nuances.

The title number was a mellifluous affair, and the melodic anchor, and scintillating solo spots by Hazan, veteran percussionist Erez Munk, and violinist Talia Shalem drew rapturous applause from the packed audience.

There were some sound balance issues, making the keyboards and double bass hard to discern at times, but bassist Yeari Ben Barak came into his own with an adventurous solo spot towards the end of the show.

Hazan’s expansive sound palette, colorful personality, and whiz-bang instrumental showmanship had us all riveted and right royally entertained throughout. Depleted resources notwithstanding, perennial festival artistic director Effie Benaya, once again, produced the goods.