piano
The expressive spectrum of jazz, the energy and directness of rock and electronic music and the colourfulness of Middle Eastern music - the trio around pianist and keyboardist Sharon Mansur, bassist David Michaeli (Shalosh) and drummer Aviv Cohen (Yemen Blues, Avishai Cohen Big Vicious) unites all of this. Sharon Mansur has internalised all those influences in an impressive way. She plays with Middle Eastern rock and pop acts on major stages, regularly performs as a DJ and keyboardist with her own electronic music and produces meditative, melodic solo piano sets - all based on a well-founded piano education at the Jerusalem Music Academy, among others.
The Sharon Mansur Trio and its debut album, which will be released on ACT on 27 June, are something like the distillation of all these influences. Sharon Mansur utilises the trio format in the greatest possible variety - from cinematic, spherical passages to rocking bursts of energy and keyboard playing that is so characteristic of Sharon Mansur, whose Middle Eastern-influenced melody lines transcend the Western limitation to semitones. For Sharon Mansur, as for many musicians of her generation, jazz is above all a state of mind, a concept that opens up spaces for new, unheard music without boundaries. A space that the listener explores with joy and wonder.
