Trouble (The Jamie Saft Trio Plays Bob Dylan)

Released in 2006 on John Zorn’s Tzadik label, this album features the Jamie Saft Trio—comprising pianist Jamie Saft, bassist Greg Cohen, and drummer Ben Perowsky—reinterpreting the songbook of Bob Dylan. The project emerged from the label’s Radical Jewish Culture series and other experimental jazz intersections, aiming to strip Dylan's iconic compositions of their lyrical baggage to explore the intrinsic harmonic and melodic structures beneath. It serves as a study in deconstruction, moving the material from the folk-rock canon into a more abstract, improvisational jazz space.

The album's design and conceptual direction reflect the aesthetic sensibilities of Tzadik, which often favors minimalist, stark presentation to emphasize the artistic weight of the music within. By selecting tracks that span various eras of Dylan’s career, Saft sought to maintain the emotional core of the songs while subjecting them to modern jazz rhythms and textural experimentation. Critical reception highlighted the trio’s ability to balance reverence for the source material with a distinct, sometimes avant-garde perspective, marking it as a notable entry in the sub-genre of jazz-based interpretations of contemporary songbooks.