Avishai Cohen Ashes to Gold

October 10, 2024

Avishai Cohen

Ashes to Gold

ECM

The failed Iran missile strike against Israel is the breaking news as this review is being written. In a weird way it only amplifies the importance of this recording from Tel Aviv trumpeter Avishai Cohen and his quartet. Ashes to Gold was recorded by Cohen and his colleagues shortly after the Israeli-Gaza war began. This is a vital document that deeply reflects the tension of what is taking place in the Middle East. Cohen talks about how October 7^th changed everything – “I could not write anything. I couldn’t touch the trumpet. In the beginning of November, I told [pianist] Yonathan [Avishai] that I was going to have to cancel the tour and the recording, but he said ‘No. We need to go and play music’. The way he said it was powerful. I knew he was right.” Cohen convenes his trusted collaborators pianist Yonathan Avishai, bassist Barak Mori and drummer Ziv Ravitz in a way he hadn’t previously. Past albums were recorded with an improvisational flair as Cohen didn’t hand the music to his bandmates until they entered the studio. Here, he was clearly after a through composed, concentrated effort, scrutinizing every note and detail. This music, written in the compressed time of just one week, evolved through performances to form what you hear. The album is dedicated to an immediate cease fire.

The five-part suite opens (“Ashes to Gold, Part 1”) with Cohen playing flute, conjuring a peaceful atmosphere that soon rings more disturbing as he plays his trumpet, mostly in a melancholy mood over the pianist’s dense, dark chords. Toward the end of the piece Cohen reaches impossibly high notes, a mix of anger and, as the piece fades, solemnity, as conveyed by Mori’s bowed bass. “Part 2,” with the bowed bass, single piano notes, and sustained bugle-like and remarkably expressive trumpet is clearly a bowed head, hand-over-heart reflection on the tragedy that occurred that fateful day. One can hear the deft use of pedals to modulate Cohen’s trumpet sound on “Part III” which begins mournfully but suggests some slivers of hope, commensurate with the title. Cohen’s lyrical line seems in direct opposition to the meditative bass and piano. “Part IV” is meditative, drawing on classical strains with Cohen expressively melodic over a rather brooding piano. Avishai’s piano delivers a series of rolling arpeggios to begin “Part V” before his deliberate, pensive solo that launches Cohen into a sharp, deeply moving solo that consumes the entire range of his horn. As we listen, we reflect on those lost and to the hostages seeking release.

With the stunning suite complete, Cohen takes pause by turning to one of his favorite classical pieces, the haunting Adagio assai from Maurice Ravel’s G Major piano concerto. The piece has an endearing but melancholy melody that sustains the mood of the suite, and bears some similarity to his writing style as it morphs though calm and heated passages. To conclude this masterful work, Cohen takes a simpler route, recording “The Seventh,” with its basic but indelible melody composed by his teenaged daughter Amalia. Drummer Ravitz and bassist Mori establish a steady groove, over which Avishai and Cohen embellish the melody in a searching way, knowing that hope is vital but elusive.

By almost any measure, Ashes to Gold is one of 2024’s most important musical statements.

– Jim Hynes

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