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AVISHAI COHEN Into the Silence ECM 475 9435

1. Life and Death
2. Dream like A Child
3. Into the Silence
4. Quiescence
5. Behind the Broken Glass
6. Life and Death – Epilogue

Avishai Cohen (trumpet): Bill McHenry (tenor saxophone): Yonathan Avishai (piano)

Eric Revis (bass): Nasheet Waits (drums)

Recorded July 2015 Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines [53:08]

Composed in the wake of his father’s death the latest album from Avishai Cohen inevitably has a threnodic character. The quietly melancholy Life and Death, with Cohen’s Milesian trumpet to the fore, seems destined for self-absorption but tempo-doubling toward the end restores at least a semblance of the life-force. The long 15-minute Dream Like A Child opens with the romantic tracery of a piano solo from Yonathan Avishai before trademark tempo-incremental build-up generates a healthy groove. Cohen and tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry exchange figures, the tenor more yielding, and the trumpet more athletic, all the while underpinned by the piano’s rich chording and reflective tracery.

These elements – the reverie and the up-tempo – constantly seek primacy in this set, or at least the means to co-exist harmoniously. This generates a valuable tension, such as the lonesome trumpet’s vigil on Into The Silence which is subject to the often relentless vehemence of Nasheet Waits’ drum patterns. Oscillatory reflections and colour refractions permeate Quiescence, an understated opus where the pianist leaves plenty of space – his aesthetic is often deliberately Classical – whilst deft front-line unisons act as refrains. Needless to say Manfred Eicher’s studio sound perfectly complements the tonal qualities and depths of Cohen’s quintet. The unhurried Miles-evoking Behind The Broken Glass, with its cathartic tenor solo, prefaces the delicacy of the album’s closing track, a piano epilogue that is a both a reflection and a summation of the set’s many beauties, clarified one last time.

Jonathan Woolf

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