Alon Farber Hagiga

Hagiga means “celebration” in Hebrew and in our music we celebrate the cultural divergence of our Israeli heritage. Hagiga is inspired by the variety of musical flavors and colors of the “Israeli soundtrack”. Our compositions cross musical genres and are influenced by Swing, Moroccan, Funk, Israeli folk, and Brazilian backgrounds.

The music of Hagiga spans the divide between meticulously written scores and freely-roaming adventures. We perform arrangements for three multi-horn players and a rhythm section - and, occasionally, a vocalist – but we also leave a lot of space for free interaction on stage. That means we never know exactly what is coming up next. This combination is what makes our music so exciting - beautiful rich arrangements spiced up with an unrestrained spirit.

Alon Farber Hagiga was founded in 2001 and has since then released four albums. The first two were released by Fresh Sound Records (Barcelona) and the third one was released by QFTF (Berlin). In September 2021 Hagiga's new album "Reflecting on Freedom" was released on one of the leading jazz labels in the world, "Origin Record" (Seattle). The album received very enthusiastic responses. Robert Ratajczak from "Long Play" (Budapest) wrote: "Alon Farber Hagiga has his recognizable style and sound, which is the work of his creative and gifted giant musical fantasy of the leader. Excellent album!"  

Hagiga has performed at local and international jazz festivals and venues, including the Paris Jazz Festival, Copenhagen Jazz festival, Red Sea Jazz Festivals (twice), Jerusalem International Jazz Festival (twice) OCT-LOFT Festival (Shenzen, China), and many more.  Over the years Hagiga has collaborated with amazingly talented and important artists such as Omri Mor, Eli Degibri, Anat Cohen, trumpeter Avishai Cohen, Omer Klein, Amit Friedman, Amos Hoffman, and many others.

Alon Farber, the band leader, studied Jazz composition at Berklee College of Music, Boston, and is a recipient of the Israeli Prime Minister's Award for Jazz Composers (2016) and the Wayne Shorter Award for Composers (1998). He is one of the founders of the "Israeli Jazz Orchestra" in which he plays lead saxophone, and also serves as associate arranger
and composer

"No other way to put it: The Alon Farber Hagiga Sextet is a fantastic find!"

(Jay Deshponde, allaboutjazz.com)

"Alon Farber Hagiga has been at the forefront of that miraculous envelope-pushing curve of Israeli Jazz for some years now" (Barry Davis – jazz writer, Jerusalem Post, former Downbeat contributor. From liner notes to the album "Reflecting on freedom").

Alon Farber, leader of "Hagiga", claims to be influenced a lot by the writing and playing of prolific trumpeter, composer, and educator Dave Douglas, whom the sextet has recently started collaboration with. He is known for the stylistic breadth of his work, the lyricism and wide-ranging curiosity of his music, and for keeping a diverse set of ensembles and projects active simultaneously. Adding a trumpet - in addition to the three multi-horns players - is interesting in terms of orchestration and Dave’s unique contributions to improvised music allows the sextet to move freely between World music, Swing, Free Jazz and Israeli music.