‘A Planet Of Melody, A Planet Of Energy’

Pitom celebrates its first release with a show next week in Brooklyn. Led by bassist Yoshie Fruchter, second from left, the group bridges Jewish modes, post-bop rhythms and metal crunch.

Pitom celebrates its first release with a show next week in Brooklyn. Led by bassist Yoshie Fruchter, second from left, the group bridges Jewish modes, post-bop rhythms and metal crunch.

by George Robinson

He’s much too modest to acknowledge it, but Yoshie Fruchter is a rising star in the small world of Jewish music. A tall, slender young man in his 20s, Fruchter plays bass with Soulfarm and guitar with Chana Rothman but, more to the point, his own band, Pitom, will celebrate the release of its first album with a live performance on Sept. 23. Given John Zorn’s imprimatur on the band’s music (the CD, “punkassjewjazz,” is on Zorn’s label Tzadik), Fruchter is clearly a talent to be reckoned with.

Even if he doesn’t describe himself in such lofty terms, he is well aware of how lucky he is to be making most of his living from his music.

“A lot of my friends

[from the music department at the University of Maryland] are three or four years out of college and going back to graduate school in law or business,” Fruchter says. “When I hear about them, it forces me to think about my own career choices, but my goal is to continue making music.”

In that respect, he is following in the footsteps of his father, Harold Fruchter, also a professional musician, who has been playing the simcha circuit for years.
“There was always music in our house all the time,” Fruchter remembers. In fact, when Yoshie was in his late teens and deciding to try his hand at guitar, it was one of his father’s instruments that he picked up. At the time, he recalls, “grunge was big” and he wanted to sound like guitar heroes from the state of Washington (Kurt Cobain, etc.).
Those years of listening to his father’s music must have had some effect, because Fruchter found that music came surprisingly easily.

“I think I had a good ear,” he says. He also had a teacher who turned him on to a wide range of jazz and rock, and his own band’s repertoire reflects some of that variety, drawing with equal facility on Jewish modes, post-bop rhythms and metal crunch.
Oddly enough, given the density and weight of his own guitar sound on Pitom’s first album, Fruchter cites Jim Hall — a master of melody and, in his solos, something of a jazz minimalist — as a primary role model. “The way I think about my music has been most influenced by Hall,” he explains. “He has a way of trying not to do too much, and that’s something I keep in mind when I’m playing.”

But he also name-checks Arto Lindsay’s noise-rock pioneers, DNA. “That’s the other side of our sound: creating an energy,” he says, emphasizing the last word with a hand gesture. “We try to walk between a planet of melody and a planet of energy.”
Whatever solar system you would call that, it certainly works.

Yoshie Fruchter and Pitom will be perform Tuesday, Sept. 23 at 9 p.m. at Public Assembly (70 N. 6th St., Brooklyn), with special guests Frank London and Minutn Fun Bitokhn, followed by a DJ set by Diwon. For more information, call (718) 384-4586 or go to www.publicassemblynyc.com. Pitom’s first CD, “punkassjewjazz,” is on the Tzadik label.

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