Avishai Cohen

Avishai Cohen - Avishai Cohen Introducing Triveni (2010) {Anzic Records}
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© 2010 Anzic Records | ANZ-5103
Jazz / Post Bop / Contemporary Jazz / Trumpet

Although tenor sax/bass/drums trio recordings have been plentiful for decades, a trumpeter plus bass and drums has been an infrequent combination on record. The young Israeli Avishai Cohen is up to the challenge, accompanied by bassist Omer Avital and drummer Nasheet Watts. Cohen's interpretation of Don Cherry's "Art Deco" is playful and lighthearted, while his expressive muted horn in the slow, slinky take of Duke Ellington's oft-recorded "Mood Indigo" would have likely made its composer smile.

Avishai Cohen’s third CD for the Stretch Records label, Colors, features the talented bassist, composer, arranger, producer, and pianist trusting his own imagination and intelligence in order to capture the auras of chord progressions and rhythmic patterns with this excellent use of musical metaphors. The composer wrote 13 selections for this program and each is a meeting of artistic colors, each rare and emanating its own originality through Cohen’s sense of harmony, expansive tones, and polyrhythms. His earthy placement of “Shay Ke,” a warm, ballad filled with the funk-Middle Eastern oud solo of Amos Hoffman, vocals of Claudia Acuna, and individual gifts from Jimmy Greene on soprano saxophone, is a prime example of Cohen’s ability to realize his maturing non-conformism. The inclusion of Avi Lebovich on trombone in addition to Steve Davis, makes the experiences of his circle of friends a splendid chance to grow musically.

Avishai Cohen impressed a lot of listeners with his soulful contributions to Mark Turner’s Lathe of Heaven album in 2014. Now the charismatic Tel Aviv-born trumpeter has his ECM leader debut in a programme of expansive and impressionistic compositions for jazz quartet (trumpet, piano, bass, drums), augmented by tenor saxophone on a few pieces. Into The Silence is dedicated to the memory of Avishai’s father David, reflecting upon the last days of his life with grace and restraint. Avishai’s tender muted trumpet sets the emotional tone of the music in the album’s opening moments and his gifted cast of musicians explore its implications. Israeli pianist Yonathan Avishai has played with Cohen in many settings and solos creatively inside the trumpeter’s haunting compositions, sometimes illuminating them with the phraseology of the blues.

Avishai Cohen impressed a lot of listeners with his soulful contributions to Mark Turner’s Lathe of Heaven album in 2014. Now the charismatic Tel Aviv-born trumpeter has his ECM leader debut in a programme of expansive and impressionistic compositions for jazz quartet (trumpet, piano, bass, drums), augmented by tenor saxophone on a few pieces. Into The Silence is dedicated to the memory of Avishai’s father David, reflecting upon the last days of his life with grace and restraint. Avishai’s tender muted trumpet sets the emotional tone of the music in the album’s opening moments and his gifted cast of musicians explore its implications. Israeli pianist Yonathan Avishai has played with Cohen in many settings and solos creatively inside the trumpeter’s haunting compositions, sometimes illuminating them with the phraseology of the blues.

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.

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.