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Avishai Cohen

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Avishai Cohen is globally recognized as a musician with an individual sound and a questing spirit, an ever-creative player-composer open to multiple strains of jazz and active as a leader, co-leader and sideman. Aside from the acclaimed work with his quartet over the last several years, and previously his trio work under the moniker Triveni, the trumpeter has also recorded and toured the world as part of the Mark Turner Quartet, the SFJAZZ Collective, Jazz100 (with Danilo Perez, Chris Potter, etc.) Zakir Hussain, and the 3 Cohens Sextet – with his sister, clarinetist-saxophonist Anat, and brother, saxophonist Yuval. Cohen’s electric project BIG VICIOUS, featuring two guitarists and two drummers, has won a devoted audience at international festivals. Named as the Artistic Director of the International Jerusalem Festival, Cohen has also been voted a Rising Star on three consecutive occasions in the DownBeat Critics Poll.

AVISHAI COHEN QUARTET
When describing trumpeter Avishai Cohen, The Guardian said “every generation of jazz trumpeters revisits the legacy of Miles Davis in their own ways, but the Israeli rising star Avishai Cohen’s version of the journey has been particularly skillful.” In 2017, a year after his impressionistic, award winning, and critically-lauded ECM debut Into The Silence, Cohen’s sophomore release for ECM Cross My Palm With Silver introduced audiences to a new collection of pieces highlighting his exceptional quartet. The adroit interplay of Cohen’s live band featuring Yonathan Avishai (piano), Barak Mori (bass), and Ziv Ravitz (drums), allows Cohen to soar, making it clear why the pure-toned trumpeter is one of the most talked-about jazz musicians on the contemporary scene.

AVISHAI COHEN BIG VICIOUS
Trumpeter Avishai Cohen has earned renown as a musician with an individual sound and a questing spirit, an ever-creative player-composer open to multiple strains of jazz and active internationally as a leader, co-leader and sideman. The New York Times described him as “an assertive, accomplished trumpeter with a taste for modernism” as well as “an extravagantly skilled trumpeter, relaxed and soulful…deftly combining sensitivity and flair.” A genre-bending venture by Cohen, Big Vicious originated from several Lower East Side jam sessions. The initial premise was to build instrumental songs based on rock riffs, using a mirrored rhythm section (in this final incarnation – two guitars, and two drummers) with Cohen leading and layering his distinctive trumpet melodies both inside and over the band. The resulting music is a combination of composed motifs, rock backbeats, and jazz improvisation that works both in a small dark club and an open-air festival stage.

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AVISHAI COHEN & YONATHAN AVISHAI
Trumpeter Avishai Cohen and pianist Yonathan Avishai have been outstanding global jazz ambassadors throughout their careers, performing in the top jazz clubs and festivals from New York to Tokyo, after meeting as boys in their shared home of Tel Aviv. The two musicians have known each other for over two decades and founded the quartet Third World Love together in 2002. Now living in France, Yonathan Avishai’s lyrical piano playing can be heard on his friend Avishai Cohen’s highly praised ECM releases Into The Silence and Cross My Palm With Silver. With a tremendous and intensively focused sound on trumpet, Cohen’s improvisations skillfully brings to life the spirit of such jazz icons as Don Cherry, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman. Now, for the first time, Avishai Cohen and Yonathan Avishai perform as a duo with jazz standards and original compositions from Playing The Room (recorded by Manfred Eicher and released on ECM in the Fall of 2019), which fascinatingly reflect the world-music-rich experience of the two musicians.