After discovering him at our festival in 2008 as a member of double bassist Avishai Cohen’s Eastern Unit, pianist Shai Maestro visited us as a leader in 2017 to present his third album, The Stone Skipper. We then defined Maestro’s music as «cinematic, narrative, meditative and sensual, with reminiscences of folklore, always lyrical in any case, both in the slower tempos and in the faster pieces». Modesty aside, we nailed it, we’d say. Maestro now returns with two more albums under his belt, both for ECM (The Dream Thief and Human), two recordings that confirm the Israeli musician as one of the great pianists of his generation. If in 2017, however, he performed as a trio (with his faithful Jorge Roeder on double bass and Ofri Nehemya on drums), now he returns as a quartet, with the addition of Philip Dizack’s wonderfully lyrical trumpet, which is integrated into the Master trio in a unique way. Trust us: Human is, without a doubt, one of the great albums of the decade.
Shai Maestro, piano
Philip Dizack, trumpet
Jorge Roeder, double bass
Ofri Nehemya, drums