INTERVIEW: Here’s one classical cellist who loves jazz
Photo: Elad Kabilio is the founder of MusicTalks. Photo courtesy of Elad Kabilio’s official website / Permission granted by GOGO Public Relations & Marketing.
The “On Stage” series at Kingsborough Community College, located in the heart of Brooklyn, New York, plays host to many important classical, musical theater and jazz performances throughout the year. One of their frequent collaborators is Elad Kabilio, founder and leader of MusicTalks, a program that takes audience members on a musical journey into several songbooks and genres.
MusicTalks and Kabilio, a trained cellist, will return to Kingsborough to perform For the Love of Jazz, an eclectic evening that will celebrate jazz music, in particular the songs and styles of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. The concert event is set for Friday, Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. Audience members can expect to hear Kabilio along with the Israeli MusicTalks Jazz Quartet and vocalists Thana Alexa and Michael Mayo.
For the cellist, the chance to highlight this jazz music is part of his lifelong journey to explore the many avenues of the musical world.
“I come from a family of musicians back in Israel,” Kabilio said in a recent phone interview. “I came to the realization that I need to be more proactive in promoting music and sharing the stories behind music. I feel like we need to have a new setup, mainly in the classical field because I’m a classical cellist, and I feel the crisis of losing our audience in the classical arena. That’s how MusicTalks began. Our mission is to bring new audiences into classical music, and as MusicTalks has grown, there are many more stories to be heard. And also there are many other genres that audience are having problems relating to because it’s not what you hear on the radio right now, and MusicTalks started presenting programs also about jazz music, world music, musical theater.”
Kabilio hopes that by sharing stories through the MusicTalks series, he and the other performers will be able to connect the music to the lives of the audience members. He wants to metaphorically break the barrier between listeners and musicians.
“In this time, we are all looking to touch our phones and use our phones, and our attention span is very short,” he said. “We need to find new ways to connect the artist and the audience, especially when the audience is about to hear something that they don’t know so well. When you go to hear an Adele concert, you know exactly what you’re going to hear, and nothing is going to be new there. It’s all about getting exactly what you signed up for. When you’re going to some different concerts, you need to be open to hearing something that you might not know so well, and it’s difficult nowadays. We want to know exactly what we’re doing and what we’re getting, and guarantee that we will enjoy.”
In his work, Kabilio feels it is a struggle to present programs of music that audience members don’t know so well. It’s the same sentiments shared by Alan Gilbert, the former music director of the New York Philharmonic, when he bemoaned the “Bolero” effect in the classical music world (i.e. accompanying Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” with a new, challenging piece in order to please audiences).
“We have this mix in our concerts that we always want to showcase the classics, either in classical music or in jazz or in musical theater or in world music,” Kabilio said. Then we want to present some other aspects, and each concert has a different subject.”
With Kabilio being a classical musician, this jazz concert at Kingsborough College teaches him so much about a world he’s still learning about.
“I have my knowledge that I acquired throughout the years, but when you work on a program, you learn from each artist because all those artists are people that studied music for so, so, so long,” he said. “They went to school. They got higher education. We all have implanted in our heads so much information that we use in order to give a great performance, but we know so much more that we don’t share with the audience. … We want to make sure the audience enjoys, but also making a statement and also ‘teaching the audience’ something that the audience will leave the evening with that.”
Along those lines, Kabilio is excited for the lyrics that will be featured at On Stage’s jazz performance. He is interested in how the musical stories of Armstrong and Fitzgerald showcase the breaking of a heart, how love can be viewed as a game, how love can be playful.
“At the same time, it’s important for us to tell the story of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong,” he said. “They were such a wonderful performing pair. They were so different, but all of their duets are so incredible. And we want to make sure that our audience knows that, so first we’ll talk about them and share a little bit of their music and their story, and have a combination of some upbeat tunes, some wonderful ballads.”
Kabilio is a musician who engages other musicians and audience members in a cross-pollination of appreciation and respect for the art form.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
On Stage at Kingsborough College will present For the Love of Jazz Friday, Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. The event, taking place in Brooklyn, New York, will feature Elad Kabilio, the Israeli MusicTalks Jazz Quartet, Thana Alexa and Michael Mayo. Click here for more information and tickets.
