Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / Orto bar / Slovenia
Concert date: 14.04.2015
Attendance: 10
Ticket price: €5.00
It’s not exactly the džezva you’d use to brew Turkish coffee, it’s a band that plays nothing other than… jazz! Not from Velika Nedelja, but from Murska Sobota. The džeZZva quartet’s set as part of this year’s Ortofest was billed as one of the more interesting live experiences on the program. And yet. At half past ten in the evening, the band kicked off in front of ten people, no more, no less, bar staff included. Even the four little cabaret tables set up in the room weren’t completely filled. What the hell is going on on this planet, and have we humans really lost the ability to judge and choose for ourselves, so that we only move along with trends and tried-and-tested, worn-smooth, thousand-times-flipped, already-heard forms and formats? Where were all the masters of the jazz school and their students that night? So this article doesn’t slide into a debate about the identity crisis of good music in the 21st century, let’s rather linger on the stage performance of džeZZva
džeZZva are Dejan Berden (piano, synthesizer), Iztok Rodež (guitar, »soundscapes«), Mojmir Wolf (double bass) and Miran Celec (drums, percussion). Masters of their craft. Late last autumn they released their self-titled studio debut. On its cover, naturally, there’s Turkish coffee brewing in a cup seen from a bird’s-eye view, which isn’t really that important given all the eclecticism of the content on this musical document. On it, the guys offer a glimpse of the broad receptiveness of music creators who set no creative barriers and look only for authenticity in the freer challenge of musical experiment. Consequently, that also means the ability, or let’s rather say the possession, of a refined arranging and compositional sense for fusing musical genres. With džeZZva we run into an eclectic mix of coexisting starting points from classic jazz, which now and then, especially thanks to Rodež’s guitar (the sound and individual motifs), pulls toward the work of Pat Metheny, while the interplay of Berden’s keyboards with Rodež’s guitar “finger-stretching” evokes the feel of the Lyle Mays/Pat Metheny duo. From there the band readily retreats into fields of avant-garde musical “twistiness” and charm, which we witnessed especially in the song IndinA. Here Rodež dove into a sea of picturesque landscapes, lively, multi-faceted vistas of sculpting a soundscape, and Berden wove a colorful solo exposé on the keyboards into all of it. It was right at this point in the show that a minor sonic snag crept in, as the keyboards covered the guitar “soundscapes” with their sound, which is a huge shame given that this is one of the most interesting songs džeZZva presented on the studio debut and at the gig itself in Orto bar. If I’m putting what I heard into words, the element that brings in the geographic origin and the essence of the eclectic content is a touch of traditional Prekmurje melos, tightly crossed with the element of jazz
If we “swerve” the article for a moment toward a review of the album »džeZZva«, it’s an album that is first and foremost remarkably genuine, candid, heartfelt and as authentically one-of-a-kind as a musical product can be. Beyond all that, the even more essential realization is that it constantly challenges the listener, teases them and pushes them to dig out the message value of the musical content. And it was no different this evening in Orto bar. With their refined fine mechanics of gentle collages, flawless organic engravings, džeZZva quite unobtrusively, softly, fluidly and willingly created a special magic world, thus fully spoiling a dozen “survivors” among the music lovers of the Ljubljana basin. Given the turnout, the show, full of pleasures, was logically cut down to just three quarters of an hour. In that time the band played, besides the aforementioned IndinA, also the songs Doli v kraju sama zase, Če bi ges bijla fčelica, Ariel, East, Spring and closed the concert with the song Tin Tin.
If you’ve read this report and regret not being at Orto bar that night, know that you have a chance to catch džeZZva in Ljubljana’s Salon za ENO glasbo, at Rimska ulica 2b. If at all possible, RockLine will be there again, because our first mission is to support the healthy evolution of quality homegrown music, which boldly builds its musical ID card on the challenging freshness of original self-made creativity!
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