Bio:
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.
Contact Information
Management/Booking:
MANAGEMENT:
Tom Korkidis
WORLDWIDE BOOKING:
International Music Network
RECORD LABEL:
ECM Records
PUBLICITY:
Sarah Humphries (ECM North America)
Christian Tolberg (ECM EUR/Int'l)
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
“Cohen is a multicultural jazz musician, among whose ancestors is Miles Davis. Like Davis, he can make the trumpet a vehicle for uttering the most poignant human cries.”
- Ben Ratliff, The New York Times
An extravangantly skilled trumpeter [. . .] relaxed and soulful [. . .] he deftly combined sensitivity and flair.
- The New York Times
Many say Cohen has assumed the spirit of the great Miles Davis, reincarnated into a powerful combination of lyricism and intellect. He among the best in world…
- LA Weekly
Arguably the most exciting Israeli jazz musician in the world
-The Chicago Reader
Avishai Cohen has rather quietly become one of the most creative trumpet players in jazz
- JazzTimes
Cohen is a versatile, modern master.
- DownBeat
A trumpeter of rare poise and lyricism.
- The Boston Globe
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).