Henri and Rachel

Henri and Rachel

On his self-released ninth album, Henri and Rachel, titled for his parents, Tel Aviv-based saxophonist-composer Eli Degibri again reveals his ability to convey profound emotions in the language of notes and tones. Joined by his immensely talented working Israeli rhythm section, the 43-year-old maestro spins an intimate, impassioned love story, portraying the personalities and idiosyncracies of his tight-knit family – his parents, his fiancé, his closest friend. Towards that end, Degibri contributes eight soulful, erudite, unfailingly melodic songs and an ingeniously reconfigured standard, uncorking a succession of impassioned declamations, ascendant and nuanced, that uphold the remark a teacher made to him during the 1990s, when he was attending Berklee School of Music: “You play old in a new way.”

Recorded on March 9, 2020, days before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Henri and Rachel is Degibri’s first album of original music since 2015, when he recorded Cliff Hangin’, which earned a 5-star review from DownBeat (a 2018 release, Soul Station, was a tune-for-tune homage to tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley’s an iconic 1960 Blue Note album of that name).

During those years, Degibri, an only child, was preoccupied not only with his musical production, but with caring for his aging and ailing parents, who both emigrated to Israel following World War 2. His father, Henri, a native of Bulgaria who passed away in the fall of 2020, developed cancer; his mother, Rachel, born in Iran, developed Parkinson’s Disease and dementia. Although Degibri was not thinking consciously of them or of his other dedicatees during the gestation process, their essence suffuses his compositions.