Enja Records is pleased to announce bassist and composer Or Bareket's enthralling third album as a bandleader, Sahar. Bareket, who is known widely as a first-call bassist for such artists as Leon Parker, Joel Ross, Ari Hoenig, Etienne Charles and Camila Meza, demonstrates his compositional mastery and instrumental acuity on Sahar. The album's tracks are adorned with potent (and sometimes wistful) melodic refrains, rife with deep harmonic intrigue bubbling with intensity. Composed and recorded during the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, a rare moment of rest for Bareket, Sahar captures the bassist on a decidedly new and fresh artistic trajectory, performing with a new generation of virtuosic talent including Morgan Guerin on tenor saxophone, EWI and organ, Jeremy Corren on piano and Fender Rhodes and Savannah Harris on drums and percussion. Prominent vibraphonist Joel Ross produced the recording, co-arranged the music and added some auxiliary percussion. The album's title 'Sahar' can be translated to "a state that feels suspended in infinity, outside the waking experience of the passage of time" but it can also be translated to "just before dawn". In many ways, 'Sahar' describes Bareket's lived experience during the creation of this material. Amidst the pandemic's imposed isolation, a moment Bareket refers to as "the complete disruption of the experience of linear time", the bassist found solace in creation. "I entered March 2020 in a state of exhaustion and reflection, wrapping up a six-month run of nearly seamless back-to-back tours with different bands including a week in Morocco with trumpeter Etienne Charles."
