Omar Hakim meets audience in museum

Deniz Çiyan ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Omar Hakim and The Trio of Oz concert took place at Sabancu Museum’s garden. Rachel Z. on piano and Solomon Dorsey on bass accompanied him.

Omar Hakim the Trio of Oz turned in a splendid jazz performance on July 25 in the garden of Istanbul’s Sakıp Sabancı Museum as part of the fourth Jazz in Ramadan event.

The trio, consisting of the renowned Omar Hakim on the drums, Grammy-winner Rachel Z. on piano and Solomon Dorsey on bass, provided fusion music featuring rock, jazz and jam to a small and distinguished group of jazz lovers.

The concert started with a cover of the song “Lost” from British rock band Coldplay, which had a soothing tune, just like the original version. The song “When you were young” by the American rock band The Killers was another part of the concert which showed the smooth and, at the same time, entertaining side of the fusion music.

The concert reached a peek when the trio performed a song titled “E.S.P.” from the American jazz fusion band Weather Report of the 1970s and 1980s, in which Hakim had played the drums for a while.

The challenging partitions of each of the instruments during the song were sumptuous and received a loud applause from the audience. The only side of the concert that was not so pleasant was that Rachel Z. used a keyboard instead of a piano, which muted and diffused the sound of the instrument. 

The intriguing fusion music suited well the epic atmosphere of the venue. The garden of the museum, which is housed in a converted mansion, lies on a slope along the Bosphorus and has a view of the second bridge connecting Asia and Europe. Listening to live jazz in such a fabulous environment while a reddish moon rose from behind the slope of the opposite side of the Bosphorus cheered the audience.

Hakim and Rachel Z. were very communicative during the concert, in which the drummer said it was their second time in Istanbul. “It is a devotion to the higher power that allows us to play this music,” Rachel Z. said.