Avishai Cohen & Jonathan Avishai Playing The Room

Playing The Room bears testimony to the long musical friendship of Avishai Cohen and Yonathan Avishai. They began to explore jazz as teenagers in Tel Aviv, and have continued to play together over many years, with Yonathan making important contributions to Avishai’s group albums Into The Silence and Cross My Palm With Silver on ECM. Their first duo album begins with music composed by the trumpeter and by the pianist and concludes with a touching interpretation of Israeli composer Alexander Argov’s cradle song “Shir Eres”. Along the way, Avishai and Yonathan improvise – freely, playfully, soulfully – on themes from jazz tradition. And, as the album titles implies, they also invite the recording space, the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano, to be part of the sound, making full use of its resonant acoustic properties in a performance with the intimacy and focus of chamber music. Recorded in September 2018, and produced by Manfred Eicher, Playing The Room is available as both audiophile vinyl album and compact disc.

There is a searching, yearning quality to Naked Truth, and a raw beauty and vulnerability in Avishai Cohen’s trumpet sound on his most improvisational ECM recording to date. Very much music-of-the moment, found and shaped in the course of a remarkable recording session in the South of France, Naked Truth takes the form of an extemporaneous suite. For most of its length the Israeli trumpeter painstakingly leads the way, closely shadowed by his long-time comrades – pianist Yonathan Avishai, bassist Barak Mori and drummer Ziv Ravitz - who share an intuitive understanding, hyper alert to the music’s subtly-changing emphases. At the album’s conclusion, Cohen recites “Departure”, a poem by Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky, whose themes of renunciation, acceptance and letting go seem optimally-attuned to the mood of the music. Naked Truth was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines, in September 2021, and produced by Manfred Eicher.

In blazing form, the trumpeter from Tel Aviv responds to the turbulent spirit of a troubled time, leading his dedicated band through a five-part suite that runs the gamut of emotions, by turns hopeful, despairing, outraged and profoundly melancholic. The melodic directness of the concluding “The Seventh”, composed by Avishai Cohen’s teenaged daughter Amalia, offers consoling contrast to the suite’s intensity. In between, Cohen turns his attention to the haunting Adagio assai from Ravel’s G major piano concerto, which has long been a highlight of the quartet’s concerts. Ashes to Gold was recorded in November 2023, at Studios La Buissonne, in the South of France.

The Israeli pianist has come a long way: awarded with a Victoire de la Musique in 2008f, has multiplied the sound experiences with a tireless gluttony. This former basketball player, adept of the big gap, goes from Gabriel Fauré to Britney Spears, from Michel Portal to Avishai Cohen's trumpet, from the most sinuous improvisation to the most colorful pop. Blue Note renews his confidence and goes out, “Song of the Degrees” (8 Février 2019), en Yaron Herman has multiplied sound experiences with a tireless gluttony. This former basketball player, adept of the big gap, goes from Gabriel Fauré to Britney Spears, from Michel Portal to Avishai Cohen's trumpet, from the most sinuous improvisation to the most colorful pop.