All was calm when I arrived at Gilad Hekselman’s Brooklyn apartment on a sunny August day. The place was immaculate and quiet (aside from the occasional rumble of a nearby train) while the 35-year-old guitarist sat, relaxed and barefoot, sipping water at a table near the window. A few hours later at Smalls Jazz Club
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Rick Rosato (left), Gilad Hekselman and Pinson (Credit: Maria Jarzyna)[/caption]
A charming home and a joyous collaboration — so what was Hekselman talking about when he named his latest album Ask For Chaos?
Well, for one, within a few hours of my departure the stillness of Hekselman’s apartment would erupt once again with the noise and energy of a young family, once his wife and year-and-a-half old son returned home. As for the band, the gHex Trio has achieved an exuberant collectivity, but that’s been earned over the course of two years together, once Hekselman decided to roll the dice on new musical experiments. After a decade and three albums with the stellar rhythm section of Joe Martin and Marcus Gilmore, Ask For Chaos (Hexaphonic/Motéma) features not one but two new trios: the more traditional gHex alongside the electric, bassless ZuperOctave, with keyboardist Aaron Parks and drummer Kush Abadey (Kendrick Scott has since assumed the drummer’s role).
“The title is based on something that I heard coming out of the Yogic tradition,” Hekselman explains. “You ask for chaos because it brings renewal. Being comfortable is not necessarily always good for you. So it’s ‘ask for chaos’ in the sense of make yourself uncomfortable and see what happens. It sounds scary at first, but it’s actually optimistic.”
Despite his ultimate optimism, Hekselman admits to some degree of distress over bringing a child into the world given the current state of politics and cultural divisiveness. In a sense, the native Israeli’s adopted country has asked for a bit too much chaos — and while he keeps his fingers crossed for the best, he’s not one to cheer on the flames in hopes of seeing a phoenix arise. 
“From a political standpoint, I’m not trying to say that it’s good that everything is happening the way it is now, because it’s going to be great afterwards. That would be a very privileged thing to say. My kids aren’t being taken away from me. I’m not as directly influenced by events as, let’s say, a person of color being harassed or killed by the police. So the message isn’t that we should be happy about everything that’s going on right now. It’s more a wish that this very turbulent time brings growth in us as a society.”
On a personal level, Hekselman has already experienced an incredible amount of growth since the birth of his son. In one fell swoop, the center of his universe suddenly shifted, bringing a new sense of perspective to what had heretofore been the main focus of his life. “Fatherhood has become more important to me than music,” he says, still a bit incredulous to hear himself say it aloud.
“It’s the first time ever in my life that anything has become more important than music. Most people still mainly see me as a musician, but for me it’s a relief to not see myself as only that. Your entire self-worth is no longer based on how well the gig went, because now I come home and get to see my son in the morning. Whatever happened last night, now I’m his father, no matter what. It’s a healthy place to make music from.”
Credit: Caterina Di Perri[/caption]
“These amazing bands that you now have to buy a $40 ticket to see, they would just casually play at Fat Cat or at Smalls,” Heksleman recalls. “So I would see them all the time, and I would always hang for the jam session at night. It was a bit different, very funky. Then, right before I left town, someone got sick and [Smalls owner Mitch Borden] asked me to lead the late-night jam session. That was my first gig in New York, and the bug was in. I spent three years in Israel practicing and playing gigs and finding a way to come back.”
The key to his return was the New School, where Hekselman began studying at age 21. Hekselman also returned to Smalls, becoming a constant at the club and forging many of the relationships that he maintains to this day. “I used that opportunity to call all the musicians that I admired,” he says. “If I went out to see Ari Hoenig’s band and thought he was great, I called Ari. I called Mark Turner out of the blue. These musicians are more open-minded than most people realize. New York is a laboratory, so most of them will be down to try to play at least one gig with you.”
With Hoenig and bassist Joe Martin, another cold call, Hekselman recorded his 2006 debut, Split Life. On his 2009 follow-up, Words Unspoken, Hekselman brought Martin back and enlisted drummer Marcus Gilmore, cementing the band that would remain at the core of the guitarist’s work until Ask For Chaos. Hekselman’s instantly identifiable sound is already evident in these early releases, combining an ethereal fluidity with an incisive edge, tethering his lyrical filigrees to a keen intentionality. The rhythm duo proves to be the perfect foil, following Hekselman’s lead with a gentle, unstressed urgency that is shared, albeit in a newfound shape, with the gHex Trio.
On Hearts Wide Open (2011) and This Just In (2013) the trio is supplemented by saxophonist Mark Turner, who shares in Hekselman’s enthusiasm for wringing harmonic surprises from the guitarist’s airily spiraling compositions. “It was obvious that they had a clear, strong bond,” Turner says of the trio. “It was like stepping into a nicely flowing river. Gilad always brought together a pop accessibility with an underlining complexity, while Marcus and Joe brought a rhythmic power that was subtle but very complex, giving a very unique power and energy to the music.”
Opening with the tolling of a gong and Hekselman’s breezily whistled melody, Hearts Wide Open ushers in a distinguishing buoyancy to the composer’s work, a quicksilver lining that imbues even his knottiest swerves with abundant warmth. “There has to be heart,” he declares simply. “I’m not into cerebral music for the sake of cerebralism. You can write the most complicated music, but if it doesn't groove and it doesn't make me feel something, I’m going to lose my interest in a couple of minutes. You’re not going to make everybody happy at all times, but if the cats are rocking and there’s a good energy to the track, I think it justifies the brainy part of it.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9I21PKZ7Pk
Those feelings are tinged by a darker sense of world events on This Just In (2013), which takes the mood-swinging structure of a news broadcast to explore the different tonalities of Hekselman’s globe-ranging influences. The absorption of all those cultural impressions turns into a kind of wistful rootlessness on Homes (2015), which reflects on the nomadic life of an immigrant and a constantly touring musician.
“At that time, I didn’t feel like I had one home,” Hekselman says. “Being from one place, living in a different place, but also traveling to many places where you start to feel some sense of ownership of a certain corner or a certain restaurant — I was trying to express that feeling along with all of my musical homes. There’s some Brazil in there, some Africa, some Israel, some Pat Metheny — all the different things that I consider my musical homes in some way.”
Photo Credit: Josh Goleman[/caption]
In the tradition of his early cold-call collaborations, Hekselman has also engaged in a series of spontaneous collaborations through an ongoing series at Cornelia Street Café. He’s played in duo settings with Fred Hersch and Cécile McLorin Salvant, and put together ad hoc trios with Billy Hart and Ben Williams or Antonio Sanchez and Becca Stevens. For the most part these are undertaken with no rehearsal and very little planning.
“The good part about becoming more established is you get better gigs and bigger audiences,” he says. “The downside of it is that things become less casual. Every concert is a concert. You need to have a set list and you need to be prepared and you need to dress up. I treat these Cornelia Street gigs like a restaurant gig, where you just show up and come up with stuff on the spot. I do those mainly to feel uncomfortable, and it’s a beautiful thing. It’s nice to see people that have played 3,000 gigs get slightly nervous.”
Pausing for a moment, he adds, “Once you ask for chaos, it becomes addictive.” Feature image: Gilad Hekselman (Credit: Josh Goleman)