Asaf Yuria | In Light of a New Moon Review

by Illiam Sebitz

Individuality in jazz comes from knowing the past, and emerging through a language already shared by generations. That shapes where a phrase begins, which note receives emphasis, how chromatic movement returns to the blues, when the melody remains explicit, and when another musician can carry enough of its information to allow an improviser to move elsewhere.

Asaf Yuria works from that premise on In Light of a New Moon. The tenor saxophonist surrounds his sole original with compositions by John Hicks, Hank Mobley, George Cables, Dizzy Gillespie, and Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke. The repertoire places Yuria firmly inside the jazz tradition, as does a band that includes pianist Cables, bassist Omer Avital, drummer Billy Hart, and, on two selections, trumpeter Joe Magnarelli. Cables and Hart were both Yuria’s teachers, while Yuria has an extensive playing history with Avital.

That background could make the album an exercise in lineage. Instead, these performances demonstrate that inheritance becomes meaningful through what musicians do with it.

Hank Mobley’s “Hipsippy Blues” sets the mood, the band does not disguise where the music comes from. Yuria enters with a classic tenor sound: full, warm, and deeply connected to blue-note inflection. Avital and Hart establish a relaxed swing, while the recording gives the acoustic instruments enough body for bass, drums, piano, and horns to occupy the same warm sonic environment.

Yuria begins his solo dramatically in the high register before incorporating overtones, octave movement, and increasing rhythmic activity. The vocabulary expands, but its center remains remarkably clear. Even when he introduces side-slipping and harmonic substitutions, those excursions resolve into phrases whose blues identity remains intact.

Chromaticism is a part of the melodic clarity, outlining the harmonic movement, Yuria also adds the earthiness of the blues. Long eighth-note lines give way to changes in articulation and register; subtone colors soften parts of the phrase; rhythmic ideas increase momentum. Near the end, a descending blues figure both recalls the language at the heart of the solo and signals closure, allowing Magnarelli’s trumpet entrance to feel like the next stage of the performance rather than an interruption.

The rhythm section works with the same linage. Hart introduces cross-rhythmic cymbal activity while Avital increases his accents. Magnarelli works with triplets, sixteenths, legato eighth notes, and repeated motives as Cables surrounds him with blues-colored figures.

Avital keeps the pulse alive during his own feature, his woody, percussive sound retaining rhythmic weight even as his lines move agilely into the upper register. Walking time then launches Cables, whose blues lines and substantial chords coexist with contemporary rhythmic patterns, fluid single-note movement, and changing relationships between his hands.

None of this attempts to make “Hipsippy Blues” sound like something other than what it is. The performance preserves swing, blues feeling, melodic clarity, and relaxed hard-bop articulation while allowing contemporary rhythmic and harmonic language to operate inside them. The musicians are not quoting the tradition. They are using it.

Yuria’s “Praise of Shadows” makes the next part of that argument through composition. As his only original on the album, it provides an opportunity to hear whether the priorities of his improvising also appear in his writing. They do.

An up-tempo swing supports horn writing that moves between compact pickup gestures and longer sustained tones. Yuria and Magnarelli give those lines enough precision for their contrasting shapes to become part of the piece’s identity. Ensemble figures and cadential events establish landmarks before the music moves into a half-time, Latin-inflected passage that changes the available rhythmic space.

The contrast is an active part of the form. Hart plays with the relationship between the new feel and the preceding fast swing, while a harmonic turn at the cadence prepares the band’s return. When Yuria begins improvising, his long eighth-note lines are predominantly legato but retain enough articulation to keep their internal rhythmic shapes audible.

The changing sections also change his behavior. In the more open half-time environment, overtones and harmonics enter blues-centered phrases. Ascending patterns create an emotional arc before falling into the next portion of the form. The common language is being applied to the improvisational strategy across several backgrounds, Yuria lets the composition determine which possibilities become useful.

Magnarelli carries that accumulated energy too. Avital walks beneath him while Cables’s comping moves through contemporary harmonic colors with smooth voice leading. The ensemble gradually builds toward a more open feel, allowing the release to grow from the preceding activity.

Cables subsequently drives crisp right-hand rhythms through extended eighth-note lines and accented chordal figures. Contrary motion appears around cadential points, and polyrhythmic tension develops before the written horn material returns. Those recurring figures restore the identity established at the beginning.

“Praise of Shadows” consequently tells us something important about Yuria’s authorship. He pulls originality and vocabulary from the language of the ensemble. It resides in the organization of contrasting materials: fast and half-time feels, compact and sustained horn lines, harmonic turns, open passages, cadential markers, and spaces in which improvisers can change their approach without losing contact with the piece.

The album’s closing “Con Alma” reduces that idea to its essentials. Dizzy Gillespie’s composition is performed by Yuria and Cables alone. Without bass and drums, the two musicians must account between them for melody, harmony, pulse, form, and forward motion.

Yuria begins lyrically. Cables supplies time through bass movement while upper voices and internal counterlines fill the harmonic space. As the form develops, the interaction becomes increasingly fluid. A blue note in Yuria’s line can prompt Cables toward another modal color. A move into the tenor’s upper register changes the intensity of the bridge. Neither musician has to state every part of the composition because each understands what information the other is supplying.

That becomes especially apparent during Yuria’s improvisation. He can dig deeply into the changes through arpeggios and approaches until the written melody becomes less explicit, but Cables fills the opening by suggesting its contour or harmonic direction. At other moments Yuria brings the melody forward while the piano becomes freer. Sometimes both imply it at once.

The melody remains present without having to remain literal. That is a significant guide in the Improvisational freedom on “Con Alma.” Yuria and Cables redistribute its information. Melody can reside in the tenor, the piano, or in the relationship between them. Harmonic substitutions can move outward because another element preserves enough of the song’s identity to make the departure intelligible.

Cables’s solo demonstrates the same principle from the piano. Bass motion, internal harmonic movement, and right-hand improvisation remain simultaneously active. Harmonic side movement and dominant approaches expand the progression, while melodic tones periodically clarify the character of the tune. When Yuria returns, rhythmic variations of the melody develop toward a dramatic ascending arpeggio and high trill before the tenor settles again into its lyrical upper register.

The final phrases use dynamics and accents rather than sheer activity to bring the performance home. Cables answers with a resonant closing sonority whose internal colors give the cadence a sense of arrival without making it overly final.

The conversation is interesting after knowing that Cables was once Yuria’s teacher. However, In Light of a New Moon uses history as evidence in an audible. Either player can supply information, alter its direction, or create enough space for the other to take a different route.

That is also where the album’s relationship with its inheritance becomes most persuasive. Yuria does not establish an individual voice by pretending the language behind him is absent. The blues remains audible. Swing remains consequential. Melodies matter. Harmonic movement has direction. The repertoire carries histories that the musicians clearly understand.

Individuality emerges from the extension of authenticity expressing from a specific sound within a genre as a starting point. On “Hipsippy Blues,” inherited vocabulary becomes material for contemporary decisions. “Praise of Shadows” shows Yuria organizing those priorities within his own writing. “Con Alma” goes further, demonstrating how a common musical language can become shared information between musicians from different generations.

In Light of a New Moon keeps that language alive in precisely this sense. Yuria and his collaborators do not preserve jazz by holding its materials still. They understand them well enough to keep making choices inside them.

Artist: Asaf Yuria
Album: In Light of a New Moon
Label: Jojo Records

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Release Date: September 4, 2026

About the author

Illiam Sebitz

Born and raised in a picturesque European village, my fondness for music began during my formative years, when the charismatic tones of the recorder first filled the halls of my primary school. This early fascination escalated into my lifelong pursuit of embracing the melodious charm of the flute; I have even spent time refining my skills at a music conservatoire. As a seasoned music connoisseur, I find myself captivated by the multifaceted world of music. I enjoy writing music reviews to better enable me to explore genres as diverse as world, rock, jazz, classical, folk, and film music, each offering a unique auditory journey that enriches my life and intellect.

In my spare moments, you'll likely find me meticulously crafting my latest woodworking project, sharpening my skills with flute etudes, or inventing tales of fantasy through the art of creative writing. My eclectic interests and expertise harmonize to create a symphony of passion and curiosity that resonates within every aspect of my life as a music enthusiast.