This richly resonant record begins with the track Life and Death, the delicate and willowy notes of Avishai Cohen's muted trumpet, accompanied by lightly-brushed cymbals from Nasheet Waits and Yonathan Avishai's piano.
There is an admirable sense of Miles circa Kind of Blue in the studio, everything is tender, even sensual about the playing. Such sensuality, one cannot help but think, may be down to Cohen being a man of the Mediterranean. There is too an unusual coda at which point the piece suddenly picks up tempo. The suggestion seems to be that, if one is lucky, one eventually gets on with it, picking up the pieces again after losing a loved one. It is indeed uncanny how the track so directly seems to suggest such spiritual repair and adjustment.
Cohen’s trumpet shines like a lone star on Behind the Broken Glass, a dreamy, celebratory piece, but with a slight world-weary tone reminiscent once again of Miles' Blue and Green, with Bill McHenry’s tenor sounding like Coltrane to Avishai’s Miles.
“The title of the song and album refers to the silence of absence, the way you see pictures of someone who is gone but you don’t really hear them in your life anymore,” explains Cohen, referring to the track Into the Silence. Knowing what we know of the personal sense of loss, it is difficult to resist hearing a certain despair amidst its resigned air, or at least, a guarded, veiled loneliness. Dissonant piano figures from Avishai build empathy and sympathy with the trumpeter’s intentions.
Cohen listened constantly to Rachmaninov’s solo piano music during his father’s final weeks, music whose spirit informed the composition of his new record. The musician resisted committing anything, finding the melodies in his head or on the piano, before he lifted a trumpet. There is therefore that air of care and premeditation in the disc's mature texture. Yet the record was recorded, mixed and mastered in a mere three days at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France.
Something wintry and Philip Glass-like wafts about that lone piano exercise on Life and Death's Epilogue reprise, a perfect end to a very satisfying album. The more you play it the more the work yields up its peculiar lustre and charm. Recommended, and available as a two-LP set on vinyl.
Avishai Cohen is performing at the NCH (John Field Room) on Wednesday July 13.
Paddy Kehoe
