““Let’s get one thing straight from the start, this album is fabulous. It is filled with talent and verve and amazing music on top. It’s one of a kind, a bebop tour de force of the highest calibre….it does some of the most inspired and tightest jazz things I have heard in many years.”
“Tenor saxophonist Benny Sharoni says that music saved him. When the 49-year-old Israeli native was doing his mandatory three-year stint in the Israeli Army in the early ’80s, the horrors of battle were overwhelming.”
“I am pleased that I was able to come accross this 2009 CD, Eternal Elixir from tenor sxophonist, Benny Sharoni. His parents began sharing music with him at a very early age, giving him the gift of life to an early calling to jazz music during his teens. He has assembled a crackerjack crew of Boston-area musicians where he lives since his days attending Berklee Collage of Music some years back. His title of his CD come from feeling a spiritual side of the music, thus the title Eternal Elixir.”
“Tenor saxophonist Benny Sharoni’s debut as a leader, Eternal Elixir, mixes the vitality of a spiritual journey with the intelligence of an academic lesson, to come up with an intoxicating cocktail of brains and brawn.”
“L’Chaim,’ says Benny Sharoni, raising a pint glass one recent afternoon at Watch City Brewing Company [in Waltham], a few blocks from his home here. It’s a simple Hebrew toast: ‘to life.’ But for the tenor saxaphonist, it has added resonance.”
“Benny Sharoni, an Israeli-born, Boston-based tenor saxaphonist, can energize even the largest, most lackluster venue with his big-toned sound and ebullient phrasing, packed with intense emotion and spirituality, a vibrant hybrid of the hip and the holy.”
“The Benny Sharoni at work on Eternal Elixir shares two sides of his emerging voice and therefore a true personality that is developing deep within the soul of the tenor saxophonist. One side of the artist is a brash young man, who favors the language of modal music. And he makes good this aspect of the artist by kicking off the proceedings on “Bernstein,” his reverential sketch of the legendary American musician and conductor of various equally legendary orchestras of the middle and late 20th Century. The rapid fire changes of Donald Byrd’s “French Spice” give further notice of Sharoni’s intentions. In fact, here the saxophonist conjures up the restless spirit of John Coltrane, and even bewitches pianist Joe Barbato into recalling the presence of McCoy Tyner.”
“I am pleased that I was able to come across this late 2009 CD, Eternal Elixir, from Israeli native tenor saxophonist Benny Sharoni. His parents began sharing music with him at a very early age, giving him an early calling to jazz music during his teens. A resident of Boston since his days attending Berklee, he has assembled a crackerjack crew of Boston-area musicians, including Barry Ries (trumpet), Joe Barbato and Kyle Aho (piano, each on several tracks), Mike Mele (guitar), Todd Baker (acoustic bass) and Steve Langone (drums). His titling of his CD comes from feeling a spiritual side of the music, thus the title Eternal Elixir.”
