NORTH BAY BOHEMIAN | JULY 17–23, 2013 | BOHEMIAN.COM
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Arts Ideas YOUNG LION Noam Lenish’s new album features ‘Waltz for Pamela,’ the last piece written by the late Mel Graves.
Deep Listening
Jazz pianist Noam Lemish returns from Bhutan for album release concert BY NICOLAS GRIZZLE
N
oam Lemish was sitting on the oor of his unfurnished apartment in Bhutan eating dinner when the text message arrived on his simple, cheap cell phone. “The king really enjoys listening to your radio show,â€? it read. Needless to say, Lemish was taken aback. “It came out of
nowhere,� he says today, recalling the news. “I was quite thrilled.� Having started his life and musical career in Israel, continuing in the Bay Area at Sonoma State University and then teaching and performing in Bhutan for a year before moving to Toronto, Lemish has certainly been around in his 31 years. The global traveler shows the same kind of range in his music, and Lemish, a tremendous jazz pianist, is about to release his second album of original compositions
with drummer and SSU music professor George Marsh. But saying Lemish is a jazz pianist is like saying a multifunction Swiss army knife is just a knife. Lemish has credits as an arranger, a composer for ďŹ lm, theater and dance, and a performer in styles ranging from jazz to classical to the eclectic style of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, with whom he toured in 2003. When he was not yet 30 years old, Lemish was asked to teach at the landlocked Himalayan
country’s only music school in 2010 (there are now two). After a few months, Lemish had his own radio show playing classical, world and jazz music. The text message about the king’s appreciation came from one of the station’s owners, and in the conversations that followed, Lemish was asked to compose a piece for the king’s upcoming 30th birthday. Lemish’s reaction, he says today, was “Why didn’t I think of that?â€? The only problem was that after only a few months in the country, Lemish wasn’t intimately familiar with the culture, let alone the native music. And he certainly didn’t want to offend the king. “I decided to make it an homage to Bhutanese culture and share a part of myself,â€? says Lemish. Limiting himself to the ďŹ ve-note pentatonic scale, a staple of Bhutanese music, Lemish awoke each morning and wrote down the ďŹ rst tune that popped into his head every day for two weeks. He used those melodies to sketch a ďŹ ve-movement, 30-minute suite. The result is The People’s King, combining a little Western avor with Bhutanese tradition, using four traditional Bhutanese instruments and a recording of monks chanting a mantra for long life. He’s since rearranged it into a jazzy version, which debuted at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival in 2011.
‘W
herever you go in Bhutan, you hear music,� says Lemish, sitting at Flying Goat in Santa Rosa and groggily sipping coffee in the morning hours. It’s early, the caffeine is taking time to work its magic, and particular phrases from Lemish require a minute to chew to reveal their depth—just like his music. Nightfall, his second album with Marsh, is just the right mix of avant-garde, time-free jazz with structured melody and