Avishai Cohen & Jonathan Avishai Playing The Room

Five years after the release of his album “Joys and Solitudes” on ECM, pianist Yonathan Avishai is back on jazz&people, the label that discovered him. Celebrating a decade of fertile collaboration with his trio, with Yoni Zelnik on double bass and Donald Kontomanou on drums, the musician releases “Shapes and Sounds” an album in which he magnifies everything that has made the strength of his style and its reputation: a way of playing with the forms and sounds of jazz, focusing on building from elements reduced to their quintessence (pure swing, the texture of a cymbal, the sound of a double bass, a few piano notes, a touch of blues…) moments of pure music. Inherited from Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk and Ahmad Jamal, his sensitive and spare touch gives rise to a series of eight pieces, six original compositions, which range from pure and sweet moments of happiness to the expression of more painful tensions, as well as two covers: “When You're Smiling”, made famous by Louis Armstrong, which will bring a smile to all those who hear it; and “La Mélancolie”, a magnificent song by the great French songwriter and performer Léo Ferré, which the pianist turns into a sad and romantic ballad that will speak to everyone through its simplicity. A favorite of musicians such as trumpeter Avishai Cohen or bassist Omer Avital, Yonathan Avishai reminds us with “Shapes and Sounds” that he is one of the most singular and touching pianists on the current jazz scene. Too good to be missed!

From the brooding opening title track to the closing Chet Baker homage, "I Fall in Love Too Easily," Dark Nights unapologetically embraces the heart of jazz. Every aspect of the album—from the cover photo, to Cohen's precise trumpet inflections, to the trio's dedication to immediacy and collective improvisation (and even the album's forays into electronic affects)—is saturated with the emblematic textures, rhythms, and imagery of jazz. This is achieved with professionalism, creativity, and skill, without a wit of irony or cliché, while avoiding both navel-gazing insularity and crowd-pleasing revivalism.

Avishai Cohen with strings ensemple perfroms at Nancy Jazz Pulsations Festival, 2013.

Shifting Sands - his brand new album - proves that he is not resting on his laurels, but don't take our word for it. Listen to "Intertwined" - the tension-filled opening track and cornerstone of the album - and you'll immediately feel that he's raised the bar again.

This lyrical jazz/classical crossover set from the Israeli composer, bassist and singer glows with seductive songs, from its luxuriously harmonised classical overture, via Israeli and Sephardic folk materials to his quietly ecstatic folk-vocal finale. Almah also features pianist Nitai Hershkovits, drummer Ofri Nehemya, and the unique oboe and cor anglais improviser Yoram Lachish, alongside violin, violas and cello. Cohen's Song for My Brother unfolds in a rolling trance, pivoting on an emphatic bass break, On a Black Horse veers between wistful baroque symmetry and implacable string-group funk, and Thad Jones' A Child Is Born gains new resonances from the contrast between Lachish's plaintive reeds and Cohen's bass.

Miralta and Cohen are remarkably comfortable and capable in their roles as soloists. At times, Cohen’s bass is as percussive as Miralta’s drums: his contributions to Sun / Sol are absolutely stunning throughout. In the trio format, Blake’s stylistic debt to Joe Lovano is somewhat more apparent than on Horse With a Broken Leg. That’s not to say that he is a tiresome, derivative sort of player. Quite the contrary, I never tired of his long asymmetrical lines and sweet, singing tone.

Charismatic trumpeter Avishai Cohen launched his exuberant, home-grown band Big Vicious six years ago, after relocating from the US to his native Israel, rounding up players to shape the music from the ground up, and co-authoring much of its newest material together with them. The group is an association of old friends.

After five years with Avishai Cohen, Israeli pianist Shai Maestro struck out with his own trio – his eponymous first record was one of the bestselling jazz albums in France in 2012. Once again tightly linked in with the same team Jorge Roeder (double bass) and Ziv Ravitz (drums), Maestro offers a series of new compositions illustrating a rich and exciting musical universe.

Israel-born composer and double bass player, Avishai Cohen with Omri Mor (piano) and Daniel Dor (drums) give irresistible perormance on October 8th 2015, Poirel hall.