Avishai Cohen

Israeli-born trumpeter and composer Avishai Cohen has built a reputation as an exploratory musician whose work spans modern creative jazz, post-bop, avant-garde improvisation, and klezmer. Emerging in the late 1990s as a bold presence on the East Coast scene, he earned praise for the range of his expression on the 2003 trio recording The Trumpet Player and the broader canvas of 2007’s After the Big Rain. Beginning in 2016 he has worked consistently with ECM, shifting from the atmospheric lyricism of Into the Silence, Cross My Palm with Silver, and Playing the Room toward the psychedelic fusion and funk-driven textures of Big Vicious. Additional ensembles under his direction include the Triveni trio, Third World Love alongside bassist Omer Avital, and the 3 Cohens featuring his siblings, clarinetist Anat Cohen and saxophonist Yuval Cohen. The wholly improvised, meditative Naked Truth appeared on ECM in 2022, succeeded two years later by the five-part suite Ashes to Gold.

Born in 1970 in Northern Israel, Cohen displayed an early fascination with music and joined the Young Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra while still a teenager. He studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston and placed third in the 1997 Thelonious Monk Jazz Trumpet Competition. After completing his studies he has collaborated with vocalists Claudia Acuña and Keren Ann, vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, and numerous others. He also participates in Third World Love with bassist Omer Avital, the avant-garde Lemon Juice Quartet, and the SFJAZZ Collective.

Cohen launched his recording career as a leader with 2003’s The Trumpet Player and followed it with the expansive, world-music-infused After the Big Rain in 2007. Further explorations arrived in 2008 with Seven and Flood, the latter completing the second installment of the Big Rain trilogy. Around the same period he joined pianist Jason Linder on 2009’s Now vs. Now and contributed to trombonist Rafi Malkiel’s 2010 album Water.

Returning to his own ensembles, Cohen introduced the Ornette Coleman- and Don Cherry-influenced Triveni trio on 2010’s Introducing Triveni. The next year he took part in the SFJAZZ Collective’s 2011 concert recording Music of Stevie Wonder and New Compositions: Live in New York 2011 Season 8. He then resumed his own projects with 2012’s Triveni II and appeared on saxophonist Mark Turner’s 2014 album Lathe of Heaven. That same year the trumpeter reassembled Triveni for the intimate Dark Nights.

Cohen entered the ECM catalog in 2016 with Into the Silence, recorded with saxophonist Bill McHenry, pianist Yonathan Avishai, bassist Eric Revis, and drummer Nasheet Waits. Created following his father’s passing, the date revealed a more reflective, atmospheric approach. The following year he reconvened the group—now with bassist Barak Mori in place of Revis—for Cross My Palm with Silver. In 2019 he and pianist Avishai issued the duo album Playing the Room.

Also in 2019 Cohen formed the Big Vicious quintet, combining trumpet and electronics with guitarists Uzi Ramirez and Yonatan Albalak (the latter doubling on electric bass) and drummers Aviv Cohen and Ziv Ravitz (the latter also handling live samples). Working in a French studio under producer Manfred Eicher, the ensemble composed five new pieces and incorporated four additional Cohen compositions plus covers of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. The resulting Big Vicious was released by ECM in March 2020, representing one of the label’s fastest completions—from initial preparation through mastering and release—in its fifty-year history.

Cohen returned in 2022 with his fifth ECM release, the intimate and atmospheric Naked Truth. Largely improvised in the studio, the recording featured longtime associates pianist Yonathan Avishai, bassist Barak Mori, and drummer Ziv Ravitz. The same quartet reassembled for 2024’s Ashes to Gold, structured around a five-part suite.