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Israeli jazz might be taken for granted in Israel, but on the global circuit, Israel is considered one of contemporary jazz's hottest incubators. "Israel is known as a jazz empire," New York-based Israeli saxophonist Uri Gurvich tells GoJerusalem.com. "It's surprising, but that is how people outside Israel see it."

With musicians like Avishai Cohen, Anat Fort to Daniel Zamir all hailing from the Holy Land, some have wondered how the tiny country came to find its oversized place on the jazz map. NPR even ran an audio feature meditating on the reasons for the current Israeli jazz renaissance.

Gurvich's debut album, Storyteller, has garnered critical acclaim since its 2009 release on John Zorn's Tzadik Records, one of the biggest names in New York's avant garde jazz scene. This Wednesday, September 1, Gurvich is set to participate in a two-act showcase for Tzadik talent at Jerusalem's Beit Avi Chai cultural center, a venue bent on redefining Jewish-Israeli identity through the arts. The lineup features another Israel's biggest names to have gone stateside for greater exposure, guitarist Eyal Maoz and his quartet Edom.

Zorn himself, Tzadik's honcho, is reputed to be a notoriously volatile perfectionist, so the trust he has put in the hands of Gurvich and Maoz as Tzadik ambassadors to Israel speaks volumes. An avid and generous supporter of arts initiatives exploring Jewish identity, Zorn's relationship with Israel is complex and nuanced. His own 1994 Jerusalem show with the Masada Quartet, eventually released as an acclaimed double album, but when plans for a coexistence-themed manifestation of his Cobra project didn't come to fruition due to regional tensions, Zorn opted not to show up to the 2003 Israel Festival.

As 2008's John Zorn Festival, marked by five days of Tzadik jams at Beit Avi Chai and various venues in Tel Aviv, attested, though, Zorn remains dedicated to consistent renewal of the Tzadik-Jerusalem dynamic. "This is very exciting for me, because I've performed this material many times in New York and outside New York - and this is the first time I am performing in Jerusalem," says Gurvich. "And in Beit Avi Chai especially, it fits the best like a glass to the hands," he said.

Gurvich's Storyteller project is a bit of an anomaly amid the sax-man's repertoire. "For me it was the first time that I did something that is Jewish music and not like mainstream jazz," Gurvich says of the album, which appears on Tzedik's Radical Jewish Culture imprint series. A review that ran in Time Out New York called the album "lush, emotive post bop with an Israeli tinge." 

While Gurvich's professional chops were honed in New York following a stint at Boston's Berklee School of Music, he began playing saxophone as a boy of 11, while still living in Israel. He played in the Tel Aviv Jazz Orchestra as a teen and won Israel's Jazz Player of the Year award at the age of 19, no small feat. In 2002, he toured Europe as the face of Israel for the European Jazz Orchestra.

The Beit Avi Chai show is scheduled to take place in the center's courtyard. The brainchild of Barak Weiss, who also serves as the artistic director of the Tel Aviv Jazz Festival, this week's concert is Gurvitch's only scheduled Jerusalem appearance for 2011 - and the finale of his summer tour. Tickets cost 60 NIS for adults and 20 NIS for students.