Omer Govreen

Omer Govreen Quartet All Things Equal (JMI 2025)

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NEW RELEASE: OMER GOVREEN QUARTET –

Quartet of Amsterdam-based bassist and composer raises its game, inspired by desperation and confusion.  

Personnel

Floris Kappeyne (piano), Aleksander Sever (vibraphone), Omer Govreen (bass), Wouter Kühne (drums)

Recorded

on January 20 & 21 at Reservoir Studios, NYC

Released

as JMI 25 in 2025

Track listing

Side A: All Things Equal / The Pole/Call / For Granted / Side B: Comfort / Rivers (Intro) / Narrowing / Waiting For Wouter

You’re a musician and sick of diseases and the disease or you have childhood traumas that are strong as the jawbones of a hyena, you’re transfixed by the beautiful eyes of the moon, the toilet is clogged and the rent is due and the lamp post asks you to dance or you’re Jewish bassist Omer Govreen, based in Amsterdam, in a good place, sidekick to luminaries as Michael Moore and Tineke Postma, but you’re in the middle of global chaos and trying to make sense of what essentially is senseless, either way, love or the leaking faucets of fate or war, you can’t help but spill some of this in your work, outlet for various emotions.

Equilibrium between intense and melancholic, enervating and cathartic, All Things Equal, the second album of Govreen’s quartet following 2022’s Maya featuring pianist Floris Kappeyne, vibraphonist Aleksander Sever and drummer Wouter Kühne, is a sound to behold. All cats equal, so to speak, they wander freely through Govreen’s expressionist landscape, never losing the big picture and with a clear focus obviously gained from experience of playing together for a long time.

Among many delights, the elegiac All Things Equal is beautifully brought to its conclusion with a repetitive strain that is worked out dynamically by all concerned, The Pole/Call is a painting that mixes the sweetest pink with spots of deep purple, Narrowing a sparkling and subtle polyrhythmic spree. Here and there, the link between bop and Ornette Coleman is skittishly defined, a playful side to a record that depends strongly on Govreen’s flexible and warm-blooded bass playing.

You can’t imagine someone else, a trumpeter, a guitarist, joining this outfit. This is it, this is as it should be. An acoustic jazz quartet that inventively strives for the way Radiohead or Edward Munch worked up strong emotions. High praise.

Eran Har Even Shorter Days (World Citizen Music Records 2024)

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NEW RELEASE – ERAN HAR EVEN

Shorter circuit? On the contrary.

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Personnel

Eran Har Even (guitar), Omer Govreen (bass), Wouter Kühne (drums)

Recorded

in February 2023 at Roode Bioscoop

Released

as World Citizen Music Records in 2024

Track listing

Lost
El Toro
The Big Push
One By One
Nefertiti
Dance Cadaverous
Capricorn
Night Dreamer


It’s not exactly armageddon that is conjured up by guitarist Eran Har Even on his tribute to Wayne Shorter, the greatest composer of the post-bop era. No mistaking, dark and ominous clouds are rolling. Brown leaves are dancing on the cobblestones like gypsies wandering over the moorland. Occasionally, the world is upside down, its blue and green resembling the colors of the head of someone who has been hanging out of the saddle of his horse on his way to the illusion of Eldorado. There’s tenderness and melancholy, a tear of sorrow, a tear of joy. This is how it should be on a record of Wayne Shorter compositions.

There is no piano to back up Even, an Amsterdam-based, Israeli axe man who played with Benny Golson, Gilad Hekselman, Jasper Blom, Logan Richardson and is a prolific partaker in the Dutch scene. His broad sound scape makes up for this suavely and he’s filling the canvas with nifty combinations of single runs and off-kilter harmonies. The tight-knit and flexible duo of Omer Govreen on bass and Wouter Kühne on drums brings out the best in Even.

There is a mixture of deceptive simplicity and challenging movements in Shorter’s compositions that is most appealing to jazz musicians, not least listeners. Obviously, Eran Har Even thoroughly comprehends the Shorter Book and re-created it to make an appealing piece of his own, whether it’s the stormy version of Lost or the lesser-known Capricorn, which swings freely and bites its own tail like a snake. Interestingly, the Juju album or anthemic Footprints is absent. He did pick the classic Nefertiti from the Miles Davis period and Night Dreamer, a great album climax that mixes nocturnal New York shadows with the whirling winds of the desert.

Eran Har Even

Find Shorter Days here.

Govreen/Sever Quartet Maya (JMI 2022)

- Francois Leave a comment

NEW RELEASE – GOVREEN/SEVER QUARTET

Israelian/Slovenian/Dutch progressive jazz collective congregates in Amsterdam. Their promising debut album Maya oozes the proverbial metropolitan swagger.

Govreen:Sever Quartet - Maya

Personnel

Aleksander Sever (vibraphone), Floris Kappeyne (piano), Omer Govreen (bass), Wouter Kühne (drums)

Recorded

on June 4 & 5, 2021 at Lullabye Factory, Amsterdam

Released

as JMI 008 in 2022

Track listing

Heal
Inwoods
Fragility
Maya
G.P.
Tired
God’s World
Trust


Some musicians eschew composing and are satisfied with playing standards at the risk of sounding old-fashioned, some colleagues arguably try too hard at writing originals because it appears to be a prerequisite for the modern jazz artist. This is only a matter of outside pressure. Of course, it’s only the inherent drive that counts. Amsterdam-based bassist Omer Govreen and vibraphonist Aleksander Sever convincingly go their own way. They have written a fresh and suspenseful progressive jazz set channeling a spirit, as they state, ‘of supernatural powers and magic’.

Govreen/Sever Quartet also features pianist Floris Kappeyne and drummer Wouter Kühne. Their seldom-heard vibes and piano combination is most welcome, neatly linking classical undercurrents to a spontaneous flood of moods. Maya positively leans towards the melancholic pieces of unsung hero Walt Dickerson. Bits of the daring interaction of Bobby Hutcherson and Andrew Hill shine through, if you will. Like the music of those adventurers of lore, Maya’s dynamic sound is the consequence of an analogue recording process. Analogue, y’all. Amen.

So much for comparisons. The band’s got a rugged, serene and mysterious beauty all her own. Heal is a beautiful melody with the tenderness of a lullaby. It reminds me of sweet and sour songs like Gene Lees’s Grandfather’s Waltz, which is high recommendation. Whoever assumes that he will fall asleep is mistaken. Slowly but surely, the tension is heightened near the end.

As far as energy and tension is concerned, Inwoods is nonpareil. Kappeyne paints with his piano notes, mixing moody pastels with Marslit reds and pineapple yellows and coming up with a sparkling canvas. Sever’s spirited vibraphone playing brings the song to boiling point, underlined by recalcitrant drums rolls. Comforting in the solid beat of Govreen, Kühne goes way out, freely counterattacking Inwood’s gritty rhythmic flow. I’m really impressed by Kühne’s current playing style (and sound!) and read somewhere that he has spend time in NYC. Did he perhaps enjoy an afternoon or two with Ari Hoenig?

The lovely slow piece Tired, surprisingly underscored by drum march figures, is another highlight of a record that features approximately 30 seconds of straight swing, just so you know what Maya, a mature album full of intriguing songs from a bunch of high-level cats, is about.

Find Maya here.