Izba is named after a now-shuttered venue in Novi Sad, Serbia. Do an image search and you’ll see that it was a tiny place with looming bookshelves, just the kind of joint to shelter forward-thinking jazz. It’s where TiTiTi, a Slovenian sax/bass/drums trio with a fraternal rhythm section, met the rather extraordinary Serb pianist Marina Džukljev.
Džukljev is the kind of musician who can inhabit an ensemble’s creative space and make it better without compromising its essence. She joined TiTiTi for this record, and while she didn’t bring any tunes to the session, all of them seem to have been designed with her in mind. Drummer Vid Drašler wrote most of the tracks; double bassist Jošt Drašler and alto-saxophonist/clarinetist Jure Boršič composed one each.
The Drašler brothers share a penchant for crisp tempos and abrupt changes of direction that grows out of the more adventurous side of the early-’60s Blue Note playbook; think Eric Dolphy and Andrew Hill. Boršič’s “Lutkar (Puppeteer)” is more choppy, a sequence of contrasting episodes that bristle with pungent activity. The sharp turns and precisely spaced intervals on TiTiTi’s tunes are perfect playgrounds for a creative pianist, and Džukljev knows just what to do with them. Sometimes, she emphasizes the leaps, letting a chord ring out for a moment before she bangs the next one. Other times, Džukljev unleashes a torrent that flows through the songs’ open areas, pulling up short to accent an ascending, sandpaper-textured reed line or punctuate a steaming groove.
Džukljev’s accompaniment puts an adrenaline jolt through each of her fellow musicians. It’s this zapping tension that makes Izba a record that deserves to transcend the remoteness of its origins and vault the hardening borders of our time. [Non-Aligned Music]
—Bill Meyer
