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| Yotam Silberstein |
A slender, wide-eyed young man entered the back room of an East Village wine bar called 10 Degrees on a recent Tuesday, lugging and unzipping a dark guitar case.
With the burnish on his orange instrument absorbing the soft overhead lights, Yotam Silberstein uncorked a swirl of Hebrew.
“Do my friends have seats in the main room?” asked Silberstein of the bar owner, motioning towards a couple on a nearby couch.
“Maybe in 15 minutes,” replied the owner, also in Hebrew.
“Al tidag” — don’t worry — said one of Silberstein’s seated friends. “We can sit back here.”
A Tel Aviv-born guitarist, Silberstein is one of a growing cadre of Israeli musicians living in the New York area. A soft-spoken resident of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Silberstein will celebrate the release of his second album, “Next Page,” at the legendary Smalls Jazz Club on July 19.
“Next Page” is the long-awaited follow-up to Silberstein’s first album, “The Arrival,” which came out in 2003.
“The albums are similar, but it’s funny because when I listen to [“Next Page”] I’m very proud of myself. I’ve improved so much and I know that the next record will be even better,” said Silberstein (www.yotamsilberstein.com, www.myspace.com/yotam1), who plans to record his next disc in the fall.
The band Silberstein commissioned to play on “Next Page” — saxophonist Chris Cheek, organist Sam Yahel, and drummer Willie Jones III — completed the recording in a single day, despite never having played together before rehearsing for the album.
“It took about five or six hours to record,” said Silberstein. “This band never played or performed together, but I’ve known all the players for a while, and it’s something I had in mind.”
Belying the band’s group inexperience is the disc’s cohesion: Yahel’s organ infuses “Borsht,” the album’s first track, with a warm, casual swing. “Ani Eshtagea” (“I will go crazy”), a Venezuelan standard long ago adopted by Israel, takes its frenetic cues from the cutting cymbal work of the drummer Jones.
The two tracks are call-outs to Silberstein’s heritage. He picked up guitar when he was 10, focusing at first on rock and blues. He gained entry to the Alon High School for the Arts in Ramat HaSharon, where he began the transition to jazz.
“I slowly started to get into it,” Silberstein said. “I had a teacher who got me really interested.” Under renowned instructors Walter Blanding and Amit Golan, Silberstein won a slew of local music competitions.
After high school, Silberstein embarked upon his first stint in New York City. Predictably, he spent most of his time playing and studying jazz, this time under the guidance of luminaries like Barry Harris and Kurt Rosenwinkel.
Before leaving for New York, however, Silberstein had auditioned to serve as a musician in the Israel Defense Forces. At 18, he returned to Israel to enlist for three years as a musical director, arranger, and lead guitarist. A 21-year-old Silberstein placed first in a national jazz competition in 2003, and qualified along with his trio to perform at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy.
Later that year, Silberstein released “The Arrival” on Fresh Sound New Talent Records. The album met with critical acclaim, and Silberstein began an extensive tour of Europe and the Middle East.
In 2005, Silberstein received a scholarship to study at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City. In September of that year, he was selected as one of the top 10 guitarists to participate in the semifinals of the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Guitar Competition.
In four years of study — Silberstein graduated in May — he developed as a solo act and a sideman, compiling a résumé that boasts supporting roles alongside Roy Hargrove, James Moody, Peter Bernstein, and others.
Like a true lead player, Silberstein’s primary concern is promoting work as a leader.
“The gigs that I would like to get people to come to are my own,” said Silberstein, who speaks with a thick Israeli accent. “I’m trying to promote my [own] thing.”
Ironically, Israel has proven the most difficult place for Silberstein to sell his music. Although he and other Israeli musicians in Brooklyn have long been recording and collaborating, Silberstein has yet to find distribution for “Next Page” in Israel.
Digital copies of the album will be available on Silberstein’s Website, Amazon, iTunes, and eMusic, but fans in his homeland — including his own family — will not be able to buy “Next Page” in stores.
Lining the shelves in Israel, Silberstein said, is a project for another day. As he noted with a long exhale, “It’s hard to take care of so much stuff.”
