AVISHAI COHEN — After the Big Rain (2007) FLAC (tracks), lossless

Avishai Cohen's After the Big Rain is an ambitious, earthy and endlessly surprising work that finds the trumpeter/composer melding post-bop, avant-garde jazz, African folk music and electric soundscapes. Having been a force on the downtown NYC jazz scene since the '90s, Cohen has made a name for himself as an adventurous, forward-thinking musician performing in various ensembles that mixed everything from klezmer and free jazz to swinging hard bop and post-rock. Here, Cohen takes his world music inclinations one step further partnering with West African vocalist/guitarist Lionel Loueke on a series of loosely connected pieces that strongly feature Loueke's moody singing and percussive guitar. Interestingly, the album often sounds more like African folk music than jazz with Loueke setting a song up and then Cohen with his muted/electronically enhanced trumpet and keyboardist Jason Lindner's wave-like Fender Rhoades joining in organically after a few bars. Cohen himself is a fire brand of an improviser who evinces both a Miles Davis-like sense of harmonic color and a knack for muscular, knotty Woody Shaw-inspired improvisational lines. Here, he mixes both styles liberally, often bumping against Yosvany Terry's rhythmic "jack-in-the-box" sounding chereke playing. In many ways, After the Big Rain harkens back to trumpeter Don Cherry's stellar 1975 jazz/world fusion album Brown Rice and in a similar sense is a moving and enveloping early masterwork. Matt Collar
Tracklist :
1.    After The Big Rain    6:13
 Avishai Cohen 
2.    Parto Forte    11:45
 Avishai Cohen 
3.    Gbede Temin    4:36
 Lionel Loueke 
4.    Meditation On Two Chords    8:14
 Jason Lindner 
5.    Afterthoughts (Mozartine)    7:17
 Avishai Cohen 
6.    Miryama    3:44
 Avishai Cohen / Lionel Loueke 
7.     African Daisy (La Suite African)    11:02
 Avishai Cohen 
8.    After The Big Rain - Epilogue    5:59
 Avishai Cohen 
Credits :
Acoustic Bass – Omer Avital
Drums, Percussion – Daniel Freedman
Guitar, Vocals – Lionel Loueke
Keyboards, Electric Piano [Fender Rhodes] – Jason Lindner
Lyrics By – Lionel Loueke (tracks: 6)
Lyrics By [Translated To Fon by] – Lionel Loueke (tracks: 8)
Producer, Trumpet, Effects, Arranged By, Composed By, Lyrics By – Avishai Cohen
Shaker [Chekere] – Yosvany Terry (tracks: 1, 2, 7, 8)

AVISHAI COHEN - Cross My Palm With Silver (2017) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

A year after his impressionistic, critically-lauded ECM debut Into The Silence, trumpeter Avishai Cohen’s Cross My Palm With Silver introduces a programme of new pieces which put the focus on the ensemble, on teamwork, with a quartet of the highest calibre.  The adroit, almost telepathic interplay among the musicians allows Avishai Cohen to soar, making it clear why he is one of the most talked-about jazz musicians on the contemporary scene. “All of these people together are my dream team”, says the charismatic trumpeter of fellow players Yonathan Avishai, Barak Mori  and Nasheet Waits, who share his sense for daring improvisation and his feeling for structure.  “I feel we’re in a perfect place with the balance.  It’s open and there’s so much room for the improvisation to take the music any place we can. At the same time the composition is very specific and the vibe is very direct and thought about.” 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 is issued on the eve of a major European tour, with concerts in France, Italy, Spain, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, Switzerland,  Germany and the Netherlands. ecm
Tracklist :
1    'Will I Die, Miss? Will I Die?' 10'20
(Avishai Cohen)
2    Theme for Jimmy Greene 5'24
(Avishai Cohen)
3    340 Down 3'51
(Avishai Cohen)
4    Shoot Me In The Leg 12'09
(Avishai Cohen)
5    50 Years And Counting 6'54
(Avishai Cohen)
Credits :
Avishai Cohen - Trumpet
Yonathan Avishai - Piano
Barak Mori - Double Bass
Nasheet Waits - Drums  

AVISHAI COHEN - Into the Silence (2016) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Avishai Cohen impressed a lot of listeners with his soulful contributions to Mark Turner’s Lathe of Heaven album in 2014. Now the charismatic Tel Aviv-born trumpeter has his ECM leader debut in a programme of expansive and impressionistic compositions for jazz quartet (trumpet, piano, bass, drums), augmented by tenor saxophone on a few pieces. Into The Silence is dedicated to the memory of Avishai’s father David, reflecting upon the last days of his life with grace and restraint. Avishai’s tender muted trumpet sets the emotional tone of the music in the album’s opening moments and his gifted cast of musicians explore its implications. Israeli pianist Yonathan Avishai has played with Cohen in many settings and solos creatively inside the trumpeter’s haunting compositions, sometimes illuminating them with the phraseology of the blues. Cohen and drummer Nasheet Waits have a hypersensitive understanding and their interaction can, from moment to moment, recall the heyday of Miles Davis and Tony Williams or Don Cherry and Billy Higgins. Yet this music, while acknowledging inspirational sources, is very much of our time. Bassist Eric Revis, a cornerstone of the Branford Marsalis quartet for two decades, provides elegant support throughout. And saxophonist Bill McHenry, a subtle modernist who has worked with Paul Motian and Andrew Cyrille, shadows Cohen’s lines with feeling. ecm
Tracklist :
1    Life And Death 9'18
(Avishai Cohen)
2    Dream Like A Child 15'31
(Avishai Cohen)
3    Into The Silence 12'14
(Avishai Cohen)
4    Quiescence 5'14
(Avishai Cohen)
5    Behind The Broken Glass 8'14
(Avishai Cohen)
6    Life And Death - Epilogue 2'44
(Avishai Cohen)
Credits :
Avishai Cohen - Trumpet
Yonathan Avishai - Piano
Bill McHenry - Tenor Saxophone
Eric Revis - Double Bass
Nasheet Waits - Drums     

MARK TURNER QUARTET - Lathe of Heaven (2014) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Saxophonist Mark Turner has steadily built a career as one of the lesser ballyhooed if no less talented jazz saxophonists of his generation. Indebted to such icons of musical intellectualism as Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane, and Warne Marsh, Turner has a fluid, egoless style, grounded in motivic, harmony-based improvisation that's always understated yet never fails to grab your attention. Borrowing the title from Ursula K. Le Guin's 1971 dystopian science fiction novel in which a person's dreams may or may not alter our reality, Turner's 2014 ECM release, Lathe of Heaven, is a measured, thoughtfully precise album that blurs the lines between post-bop jazz, classical chamber music, and free improvisation. Working with his pianoless quartet featuring trumpeter Avishai Cohen, bassist Joe Martin, and drummer Marcus Gilmore, Turner has developed an ensemble-based approach to jazz that sidesteps both traditional and avant-garde jazz conventions at every turn. In fact, while the aesthetics of Turner's songs lean toward free jazz (and there are certainly moments of unbridled free improv and group interplay on the album), Lathe of Heaven is noticeably devoid of the instrumental skronk and squelch often associated with freer forms of jazz. Instead, Turner's music is formal, minimalist, lacking in frenetic bebop or blues-based inflection, and primarily focused on long-form melodic statements that Turner and Cohen often play in harmonized counterpoint. This is deeply meditative, intellectual music that defies categorization while at the same time bringing to mind such disparate touchstones as '70s Kenny Wheeler, '60s Ornette Coleman, and the lyrical '50s West Coast cool of the Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan pianoless quartet. Ultimately, in much the same way that the layers of our dreams are stripped back to reveal a deeper, more profound, and at times unsettling truth in Le Guin's novel, with his Lathe of Heaven Turner strips back layers of jazz style and language to reveal a sound that is both familiar and utterly new. Matt Collar  
Tracklist :
1    Lathe of Heaven 6'40
(Mark Turner)
2    Year of the Rabbit 12'20
(Mark Turner)
3    Ethan’s Line 8'01
(Mark Turner)
4    The Edenist 8'11
(Mark Turner)
5    Sonnet for Stevie 12'57
(Mark Turner)
6    Brother Sister 10'09
(Mark Turner)
Credits :
Mark Turner   Tenor Saxophone
Avishai Cohen   Trumpet
Joe Martin   Double Bass
Marcus Gilmore   Drums 

ANAT COHEN - Place and Time (2005) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

A talented saxophonist and clarinetist originally from Israel, Anat Cohen has strong tones on tenor, soprano and clarinet and is a creative improviser within the modern mainstream of jazz. She contributed six excellent originals to her debut recording including a few wistful ballads and the somewhat heated "87 North." Her clarinet playing on "Veinte Anso," an immediately recognizable Cuban melody taken here as a tango, is charming. Her quartet, which teams her with the versatile and supportive pianist Jason Lindner, is expanded on four numbers that add her brother Avishai Cohen (no relationship to the famous bassist) who contributes some effective trumpet. With the Cohens sharing the front line and Lindner dropping out, they re-create the sound of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet on "As Catch Can" (even if tenor is substituted for Mulligan's baritone). The other songs are generally more exotic, displaying Anat Cohen's interest in Latin music and her Israeli heritage. All in all, this is a very impressive debut. by Scott Yanow
Tracklist:
1 Place & Time 5:40
Anat Cohen
2 The 7th of March 6:07
Anat Cohen
3 Veinte Anos 4:59
Maria Teresa Vera
4 87 North 8:04
Anat Cohen
5 Say It 8:38
Frank Loesser / Jimmy McHugh
6 Homeland 6:39
Anat Cohen
7 As Catch Can 3:22
Gerry Mulligan
8 Pour Toi 4:39
Anat Cohen
9 Bat-El 8:21
Anat Cohen
Credits:
Acoustic Bass, Double Bass – Ben Street
Clarinet, Soprano Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone – Anat Cohen
Drums – Jeff Ballard
Percussion – Jeff Ballard (tracks: 2)
Piano – Jason Lindner
Trumpet – Avishai Cohen (tracks: 4, 6, 7, 9)