In 1993, two young musicians met in Boston, both scholarship awardees of the
renowned Berklee College of Music: German guitarist Tos de Winkel and Israeli
pianist/keyboardist Sasi Shalom.
After both relocated to New York City in 1995, they began work on what would
soon become their most recent and first joint recording, 'Long Time Coming'.
With the help of jazz legends Buster Williams, Al Foster and Ravi Coltrane as
well as guest vocalist Jill Seifers, the two display their affinity to the
quirkiness of Thelonious Monk and Keith Jarrett's free-flowing lyricism,
uninhibitedly stretch from tongue-in-cheek New Orleans grooves and
19th-century European classical influences to tell-tale songs of heartache as
well as the contemporary modal and occasionally atonal. 'Who could possibly
mind', says de Winkel with a smirk, 'it's the ever same twelve notes'
Both musicians conducted succesful careers prior to coming to America. de
Winkel gained early notoriety at age 19 when the release of his debut
recording 'Mastertouch', on which he was supported by the likes of Michael
Brecker, Alphonse Mouzon, Joachim Kuhn and Ernie Watts, made him the youngest
European artist ever given complete creative control by a major label. Soon,
the ethnically influenced follow-up 'Humanimal Talk' with Nana Vasconcelos
earned Tos highest praise by European audiences and critics alike. An
invitation to become successor to Mike Stern and Frank Gambale in Steve
Smith's Vital Information followed. With this group, Tos toured the U.S. and
Europe and recorded the SONY Columbia release 'Fia Fiaga'. Finally, Pat
Metheny presented Tos as his first ever 'second' guitarist on the tour
presenting the Grammy Award-winning Geffen release 'Secret Story'.
Shalom is widely acknowledged in his home country for his two albums as a
leader. 'Modus' and 'The Way I See It' earned him the reputation of one of
his country's outstanding jazz composers. In the U.S., he received Mix
Magazine's Tech Award and was comissioned to compose music for companies such
as AT&T, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola and Burger King. He has collaborated with the
likes of Will Downing, Ralph McDonald and Donald Harrison. Recently, his
original jazz score to the motion picture 'Stop It' helped it win the
prestigious Martin Scorsese Award.
long time coming
' If we are to have peace on earth x our loyalties must transcend our race,
our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world
perspective. No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and as
long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world. We must
either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish
together as fools.' - Martin Luther King
In the thirty years since this was said, our need to live by these words has
not diminished, but grown ever more urgent. We hope that this recording may
not only be a document of the state of our respective artistic developments,
but also be understood as a wholehearted endorsement of the above spirit.
With remarkably little effort, many entrenched divisions are being bridged
here: a German and an Israeli with an intuitive affinity to each other's
musical souls aided and made complete in their effort by an African American
master rhythm section prove that, as the cliche has, there indeed is an
international language - spoken by all who care enough to not mind the effort
to seek what unites us rather than to indulge our inherited competitive
instincts, who understand that our mere humanity makes us all the same.
People are not good or bad, merely less or more afflicted - all equally
deserving of our compassion. We are called upon to refuse to perpetuate the
misery of the human condition by at least striving to let our every action,
our every thought be motivated by love and not by fear, by not giving in to
our reflexes to afflict others as the world has afflicted us. Our reward
shall be the soothing of our longing for a sense of purpose, knowing that we
may leave the world a little better than we found it. Back To Top
