Ariel ( piano) with guests: Jean Claude Jones (bass), Jess Koren (tenor saxophone), Harold Rubin (clarinet), Jerry Garval (drums)

Recorded at the Kadima Studio, Jerusalem, May-September 2006.
Recorded and mixed by Ori Winokur. Cover art by Ariel.

Liner notes:
The present collection captures Ariel's playing, improvisation, and composition in his 9th year, a little over a year after he first discovered jazz when he acci¬dentally clicked on an Earl Hines link. Until the age of 7 Ariel's training was entirely classical, but he had been improvising since he was 4 years old, so he took to jazz naturally.
The album contains mostly Ariel's own compositions and improvisations, prima¬rily because composition, free improvisation, and avant-garde are the main attractions of jazz for him. The few standards that appear in the collection do so in substantially altered states. This collection is a mixture of Ariel's original compositions in various idioms; free improvisations for solo piano and duets with sax or clarinet; and his free interpretation of a few pieces of the standard jazz repertoire. Whatever the starting point of each piece, they all show Ariel's enthusiasm for free improvisation and his unique mixing of styles, ideas, and influences.
If you wish to keep up with Ariel's further forays into the world of jazz and music in general, you can find his site at www.arielpiano.com.

Mixed Feelings (Ariel). This nested piece features a haunting, lyrical outer shell and proceeds inward with progressively more dissonant parts. At the core is a highly percussive free section.
Lonely Woman Variations (Ariel). This classic tune is performed by the trio in a free style, with the bass as the lonely instrument, wandering around familiar landmarks in restless agitation.
Ornithology (C. Parker). Ariel departs from the usual rhythmic rendering of this standard and reveals its lyrical quality with long melodic lines and rubatos à la Chopin in the opening and closing sections. Between these cantabile book¬ends he inserts a free solo that draws its inspiration from the likes of Bartok and Matthew Shipp.
Impressions of Manteca (Ariel). Bass four-hands rendition of the legendary tune, with JC Jones and Ariel tapping on the bass and plucking the strings simultaneously.
Free Piano Solo (Ariel) Free solo improvisation in the spirit of Jean Claude Jones's admonition to Ariel: "...and don't work too hard on preparing improvisa¬tions, get your mind away from thinking as much as possible whenever you play in a free musical environment. Never forget this rule. TRÈS TRÈS GROSSE RÈGLE! RÈGLE TRÈS TRÈS GROSSE! GROSSE RÈGLE TRÈS TRÈS!"
Avant-Duet with Sax (J. Koren & Ariel). Free improvisation: unplanned, unprepared, unrehearsed.
Avant-Duet with Clarinet (H. Rubin & Ariel). This unrehearsed free dialog between clarinetist Harold Rubin and Ariel was performed live at a Kadima salon (hence the different sound). It is the first time the two, who are separated by three generations, have played together.
Lizarb (Ariel). Ariel's first tune committed to paper, and the oldest piece in this collection.
Pilgrimage (Ariel). The determined pilgrim of this tune proceeds at a rapid clip through the stark, arid landscape strewn with unexpected obstacles.
Lonely Women (O. Coleman et al.). The tune is based largely on Ornette Cole¬man's Lonely Woman (1959), but it interleaves material from two other tunes with the same name by Horace Silver (1963) and Benny Carter (1937), played at times in counterpoint.
Autumn Leaves (J. Kosma). In another nested rendering, Ariel inserts a free, atonal solo between two lyrical variations on the famous tune, and wraps it all in the original tune, in a dissonant form at the beginning and a harmonized one at the end.
31 Bars for Ornette (Ariel). This tune, dedicated to Ornette Coleman, is loosely based on a Ugandan tune, only a hint of which remains in the bridge. The free solo climaxes with three crashing clusters that bring an odd sense of relief and resolution.
A bonus track contains a live performance by Ariel of Copland's scherzo humoristique The Cat and the Mouse. This audio track has been taken from a low-quality video recording.
G.L.