Roberto Juan Rodriguez — The First Basket

The First Basket is a rewarding and genre varied soundtrack for a documentary about the history and trails and tribulations  of Jewish American basketball players that goes from them playing with trash cans placed on the stoops of brownstones to the bright lights of Madison Square Garden.

The albums relatively short but consist 30 tracks cover a lot of sonic ground going from: Jewish tinged jazz to vibrate klezmer, through to Santana like modern Latin/ Cuban rhythmic based rock work-outs. Onto playful and buoyant Dixieland jazz, into electro beat work-outs shimmering surf guitar meets jazzy Jewish clarinet vibes. Onto electo dub reggae atmosphrics, through to modern beat tipped easy listening vibes, onto smoky slow late night jazz piano and sax wonderings, to Cuban eletroinca beat work-out meets Jewish tinged organ runs. Really there’s much to like and enjoy through-out and unlike many soundtracks their doesn’t seem one central melodic theme so this plays very well as an album in it’s own dramatic right.

The album is all written and arranged by respected Cuban Jewish percussionist and composer Roberto Juan Rodriguez who also handles Programming, Drums & Shofar. And he’s joined by fairly large cast of players to paint the albums many moods and genre colours- we have: Peter Apfelbaum: Tenor Saxophone, Brad Jones: Bass, Frank London: Trumpet, Meg Okura: Violin, Seth Baer: Bassoon ,CJ Camerieri: Trumpet, Ron Caswell: Tuba, Amber Chisholm: French Horn, Brian Drye: Trombone, Gilad Harel: Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, Matt Munisteri: Banjo ,Oz Noy: Electric Guitar and  Uri Sharlin: Piano, Accordion, Organ.

Simply put The First Basket is a wonderfully played, conceived and approachable muilt-genre soundtrack that’s full of melodic flare, dramatic edgers and creative mood making.