Avishai Cohen at Art Boutiki
/What better way to spend your St. Patrick’s Day than coming to a tiki-themed comic book shop to listen to one of the world’s best trumpet players.
A year after his impressionistic, award winning and critically-lauded ECM debut Into The Silence, Avishai Cohen’s Cross My Palm With Silver (May 5th, 2017) introduces a program of new pieces which put the focus on the ensemble, on teamwork, with an exceptional quartet featuring Yonathan Avishai (piano), Barak Mori (bass) and Nasheet Waits (drums). The adroit interplay among the musicians allows Avishai Cohen to soar, making it clear why the pure-toned trumpeter is one of the most talked-about jazz musicians on the contemporary scene.
In 2016 alone, Cohen was named “Best Foreign Artist” by Jazz Magazine France, while Into the Silence was awarded “Best Album of the Year” by TSF Jazz and Academie du Jazz, and in the top 20 albums of the year by JazzTimes. For four years running, Cohen has been voted a Rising Star-Trumpet in the Down Beat Critics Poll. Along with leading his quartet, the trumpeter has led Triveni (a trio with Omer Avital and Nasheet Waits) for over a decade, was a member of the prestigious SFJAZZ Collective for six years, and has been a featured soloist in a number of special ensembles – most recently in “Jazz 100” alongside Danilo Perez, Lizz Wright, Chris Potter and Wycliffe Gordon. He also records and tours the world with The 3 Cohens Sextet, the hit family band with his sister, clarinetist-saxophonist Anat, and brother, saxophonist Yuval. Declared All About Jazz: “To the ranks of the Heaths of Philadelphia, the Joneses of Detroit and the Marsalises of New Orleans, fans can now add the 3 Cohens of Tel Aviv.”
The trumpeter began performing in public in 1988 at age 10, playing his first solos with a big band and eventually touring with the Young Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra to perform under the likes of maestros Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur and Kent Nagano. Having worked with Israeli folk and pop artists in his native country and appeared on television early on, Cohen arrived as an experienced professional musician when he took up a full scholarship at Berklee College of Music in Boston. In 1997, the young musician established an international reputation by placing third in the Thelonious Monk Jazz Trumpet Competition. Avishai came of age as a jazz player as part of the fertile scene at the club Smalls in New York’s West Village.
Cohen first recorded for ECM as part of saxophonist Mark Turner’s quartet on Lathe of Heaven, released in September 2014. The trumpeter has performed at the Village Vanguard and beyond with Turner, as well as widely in a band led by pianist Kenny Werner. Cohen has played often in the Mingus Big Band and Mingus Dynasty ensemble, and he has lent his horn to recordings by Anat Cohen, Yuval Cohen and keyboardist Jason Lindner, along with collaborating on stage with French-Israeli pop singer Keren Ann, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Indian Tabla Master Zakir Hussain. In addition to performing, Cohen was named the Artistic Director of the International Jerusalem Festival in 2015.
As with Into The Silence, Cross My Palm With Silver was produced by Manfred Eicher at Studios La Buissonne in the south of France. It was released on the eve of a European tour, with concerts in France, Italy, Spain, Luxembourg, Great Britain, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands and followed by a worldwide tour in the Fall of 2017.