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Conversation with Avishai Cohen
by Franz A. Matzner
Avishai Cohen has already had a stellar musical career. Playing on bass, electric bass, and piano, Cohen has worked with Chick Corea, recorded solo, and founded his own rock group. He has proven himself both as instrumentalist and composer. With his latest release, Lyla Cohen has taken on the next challenge of label owner by founding Razdaz Records. Though Razdaz Record's only release to date is Cohen's recording, Cohen plans to expand the label in the future. ...
Continue ReadingAvishai Cohen: Lyla
by Franz A. Matzner
Cross-pollination albums are difficult to produce, difficult to market, and most of all, difficult to make well. Lyla may very well succeed at all three. Combining Latin sources and electronic dance grooves with sampling and textural elements, pop covers, solo piano, and traditional jazz methods, Avishai Cohen has without a doubt succeeded in creating a truly multi-genre album. Lyla not only presents music from diverse sources, but shows Cohen's willingness to blend and blur genre lines to ...
Continue ReadingAvishai Cohen: Colors
by AAJ Staff
Releasing already his third CD on the Stretch label, Avishai Cohen is further elaborating on the vision he revealed on “Adama" and continued through his second CD, “Devotion."Make no mistake about it: “Vision" is the appropriate word for explaining the aesthetic he expresses on “Colors." Not only does Cohen possess an broad artistic perspective that becomes more evident with each release, but also he quite literally compares the music he embraces with the literal sense of vision. Indeed, ...
Continue ReadingAvishai Cohen: Colors
by AAJ Staff
Releasing already his third CD on the Stretch label, Avishai Cohen is further elaborating on the vision he revealed on “Adama" and continued through his second CD, “Devotion."Make no mistake about it: “Vision" is the appropriate word for explaining the aesthetic he expresses on “Colors." Not only does Cohen possess an broad artistic perspective that becomes more evident with each release, but also he quite literally compares the music he embraces with the literal sense of vision. Indeed, ...
Continue ReadingAvishai Cohen: Devotion
by Jack Bowers
This is Israeli–born bassist Avishai Cohen’s second recording as leader, and, like the first, it is comprised mainly of his compositions (an even dozen, plus the traditional “Linda de Mi Corazon” and pianist Lindner’s “Candela City”), which I described in an earlier review as “upbeat and buoyant” (and which for the most part remain so on Devotion ). There were two Bass Suites on Cohen’s debut, Adama, and this one includes “Bass Suite No. 3,” parts 1 and 2, on ...
Continue ReadingAvishai Cohen: Devotion
by Jim Santella
Avishai Cohen's modern mainstream sextet performs in a hard bop tradition while encompassing ethnic influences from all over the world. In Cohen's compositions you can pick out modes, rhythms, and themes that feel as though they represent cultures from eastern Asia, northern Africa, central Europe, South America, southwestern Asia, the U.S. and more. The 28-year-old Jerusalem native, who wrote all but two pieces for Devotion, has spent his adult years learning the trade while working for two years with Danilo ...
Continue ReadingAvishai Cohen: Adama
by Jack Bowers
It’s true, one can’t always appraise a book by its cover. Looking at bassist Avishai Cohen’s grim visage on the jacket of Adama, I was expecting to hear music of a similar temperament within. And while there are a few brooding passages, most of Cohen’s music — he wrote 11 of the disc’s dozen selections — is upbeat and buoyant. Melodically and rhythmically in the mainstream, it’s also eccentric enough to capture one’s interest and bear repeated listening (lend an ...
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