Cohen Annekine

Nach seiner abgeschlossenen Album-Trilogie und dem druckvollen (Studio-)Live-Album „Live aus der Vergangenheit“ wartet ERIK COHEN 2021 endlich mit seinem vierten Langspieler auf. Eine Platte, verdammt viele Hits.

Many musicians dream of making a record with a symphony orchestra, but few can afford to make it a reality. Thanks to an extraordinary ability to compose melodies that take root in his listeners’ minds and because he has, for years, patiently performed these compositions on stage to the point where they are practically a part of him, Avishai Cohen was well-positioned to execute such an ambition. As Cohen himself notes, his songs seem predisposed to adaptation at an orchestral scale, and the fact that they retain the same intensity that has provoked such widespread admiration demonstrates the vigor of his music.

You Want It Darker is the fourteenth and final studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, released on October 16, 2016, by Columbia Records, nineteen days before Cohen's death. The album was created towards the end of his life and focuses on death, God, and humor. It was released to critical acclaim. The title track was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance in January 2018. After touring extensively between 2008 and 2013, Leonard Cohen began to suffer "multiple fractures of the spine" among other physical problems, according to his son Adam Cohen. Due to Leonard Cohen's mobility issues, You Want It Darker was recorded in the living room of his home in Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles and then sent by e-mail to his musical collaborators.

In their very first recording together, pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin and the Violons du Roy present Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s piano concertos No. 22 and No. 24 that are replete with passionate outbursts, startling contrasts, rich orchestration and overt emotional fervor. Charles Richard-Hamelin, Silver medalist and winner of the Krystian Zimerman award at the International Chopin Piano Competition in 2015, impresses with his extremely refined playing and the Violons du Roy, under the direction of Jonathan Cohen, offer grandiose performances imbued with dignity and grace.

Leonard Cohen, who liked to call himself a 'chansonnier,' grew up in French‐speaking Montreal, Canada. He is appreciated both as a poet and for his sensitivity to combining words and music. This project connects Cohen musically and poetically with previous generations of songwriters. Orlando di Lasso's famous 16th century chanson Susanne un jour meets Cohen's Suzanne. Josquin des Prez's Adieu mes amours or courtly dances published by Pierre Attaingnant in Paris in 1529 combine with Cohen's songs and the eras converge. With knowledge of Renaissance musical practices, new diminutions on Cohen's music emerge, including original chordal accompaniments for viola da gamba or lute based on late 16th and 17th century models.

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.

On Soli, Tamsin Waley-Cohen's 2015 release on Signum Classics, the violinist explores modernist repertoire composed between 1944 and 2005. Because these solo violin pieces by Béla Bartók, George Benjamin, Krzysztof Penderecki, Elliott Carter, and György Kurtág are challenging for both the player and the listener, one should approach this CD with some awareness that they reflect different phases of the avant-garde movement that dominated music in the last half of the 20th century.

Iroko launches Avishai Cohen’s longtime dream “to do a Latin project with his favorite Latin musician in New York”. Israel based bassist - singer and master conguero-vocalist Abraham Rodriguez Jr., brim with tunefulness, grooves, warmth, indelible melodies and the bonds of brotherhood to summon Yoruba gods.