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Albare’s Love of Music, Family, Israel and Philanthropy

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February 19, 2020
Albare

In music circles, he goes by one name: Albare. He’s a jazz guitarist and composer, and he’s speaking with the Journal about his latest album. However, the 63-year-old, born Albert Dadon in Morocco, raised in Israel and France, and who moved to Melbourne, Australia, in 1983, wears many hats. 

In addition to his musical hat, the father of three is a philanthropist, a property developer, hotelier and club owner. He founded Le Concours des Vins de Victoria, an annual wine festival. Passionate about fostering relationships between Israel and Australia, in 2001 he was the chairman of Victoria’s United Israel Appeal and the following year he founded and chaired the Australian Israel Cultural Exchange. In 2008, he received the Order of Australia for his services to the arts, and in 2009 established the Australia Israel Leadership Forum, which in 2011 was expanded to England and became the Australia-UK Leadership Dialogue. He also was the chairman of the Melbourne International Jazz Festival from 2003-2005 and was the Artistic Director of the festival between 2006 and 2009 — a festival that hosted such luminaries as Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and McCoy Tyner. 

He responds to all these accolades by simply stating, “I wear many hats.” 

For now, he wants to talk about his new album, “Albare Plays Jobim,” his tribute to the father of bossa nova, Antonio Carlos Jobim (1927-1994). The album has generated buzz and is now in the top 20 on the U.S. JazzWeek charts.  

Jobim is best known in the United States through recordings of his songs by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz and others. Albare said he discovered Jobim when he was 15 through the music Jobim wrote for the 1959 film “Orfeu Negro” (Black Orpheus). “To me, it sounded magical,” Albare said. “There were guitar chords I didn’t understand.” 

Albare started playing guitar when he was 8 after his mother bought him the instrument. Initially disappointed (he wanted an accordion), Albare attended the local conservatory in Dimona, Israel, but left after two years. 

“I was bored to bits,” he said. He loved music, especially the jazz his America-loving father played, but didn’t see how that related to his guitar. That changed when his family moved to France when he was 11. There, Albare discovered the pioneering gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt and took his guitar to the street to play with his friends. At 14, his parents bought him an electric guitar and amplifier, and he started playing rock ’n’ roll and fusion jazz in bands. 

“I have time for my family, time for studying. There’s time for business and there’s time to build and time to implement. You have to figure out how to put it all together.”  — Albare

But in his 20s, Albare put his music aside, instead concentrating on business. Moving to Australia at 28, he became the president of the French Chamber of Commerce in Victoria, but at 30, he suffered debilitating panic attacks. 

“I didn’t know what I had,” he said, and neither did his doctors. “The more diagnoses I’d hear, the more depressed I became.” After seeing a neuro-linguistic programmer and studying with Chabad, Albare said he came to realize he missed playing music.  

Through Transcendental Meditation, Albare said he discovered he “could actually be and do as many things as I wanted to. That’s the time when I went back deeply into music,” practicing upward of six hours a day while still working. 

He did so, he said, by eliminating the “obstructions” in his life. “I have time for my family, time for studying. There’s time for business, and there’s time to build and time to implement. You have to figure out how to put it all together.”

Albare released his first album, “Acid Love,” in 1992. It was picked up by Australia’s national alternative radio station Triple J Radio and spent 16 weeks at the top of the jazz charts. “Suddenly, I was getting engagements, people were lining up to come to my gigs,” he said, adding that if “Acid Love” had failed, “it would have been my last record.” 

“Albare Plays Jobim” is Albare’s 14th album, and the seeds for it were planted while Albare was recording his 2016 “Dreamtime” album featuring his interpretations of classic movie themes recorded with a 25-piece orchestra arranged by Joe Chindamo, his longtime pianist. He wanted to follow it up but wasn’t sure of the theme.  Chindamo was also a fan of Jobim’s music and presented the idea to Albare.

Albare said his versions of Jobim’s classics would “probably be a surprise to Jobim.” The biggest difference, Albare explained, is the lack of vocals on his album. “My tribute is to allow the music to talk for itself,” he said. 

Albare also reworked the song’s tempos. “Corcovado,” one Jobim’s best-known songs, is usually an upbeat tune. Albare’s version is played “super slow,” he said, adding he hopes that “even if you recognize the songs, you don’t recognize them entirely.” 

Albare performs on guitar, with Chindamo (who also arranged the pieces) on piano, Antonio Sanchez on drums and Ricardo “Ricky” Rodriquez on bass. Phil Turcio produced the album, yet none of them were in the studio at the same time during the recordings. 

“People are traveling all the time and it’s hard to get together,” Albare said. Instead, they worked out the arrangements by emailing each other files and recording their parts separately. Albare laid down his solos last. He recorded them over a day and a half while recovering from knee surgery. Playing the guitar, he said, helped him forget the pain.

Albare expects to take this band on the road this year and has plans to include a few dates in New York and Los Angeles. Until then, he’s busy working with South American musicians and his band Urbanity, which plays fusion jazz. 

And, of course, there’s his other life, including the annual Leadership Dialogue in Israel. Events like these, he said, keep his connection to Israel and Judaism. It brings “a sense of commitment, a sense of history, a sense of tradition that I hope I’ve passed on to my kids,” he said. “It’s very important to me.”

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