The Trumpet Player

Avishai Cohen

Listen: Sample 1 Sample 2 Sample 3

"What a pleasure to hear an emerging musician put out a record with the real spirit what I consider jazz to be. That is the spontaneous, risk taking which the listener should feel immediately and is a trademark of the masters of jazz... Real playing in real time!! That is what this debut recording of Avishai Cohen's shows".
- Dave Liebman, September 2002.

Tracklisting:

1. The Fast (6:02)
2. The Trumpet Player (10:28)
3. Dear Lord (7:36)
4. Olympus (8:47)
5. Idaho (6:48)
6. Shablool (10:30)
7. Giggin' (6:23)

Recorded November 2002 in New York City.

Reviews / News:

"It's a good moment for trumpeters in jazz. Wynton Marsalis has been performing at his peak recently; Dave Douglas still comes up with a different band every year; Jeremy Pelt, Keyon Harrold, LeRon Thomas and Jonathan Finlayson are among the promising new arrivals. Avishai Cohen is the latest to step forward with a first recording. (There has been confusion: he has the same name as a prominent young bassist in New York,
and they're both Israeli.)

Mr. Cohen's album, "The Trumpet Player," on the Spanish label Fresh Sound, is a thrown gauntlet: it's almost all just a trio of trumpet, bass and drums. Playing as the leader without a chordal instrument places incredible demands on a trumpeter; outside of the avant-garde, it hasn't been done much before. But Mr. Cohen, evidently, likes the challenge. With the bassist John Sullivan and the drummer Jeff Ballard, he plows ahead, rooted in disciplined eighth-note playing but regularly breaking out into more abstract, intuitive phrases; he's got some of the confident tone and rhythm of Clifford Brown under his fingers, and plays battling, hard hitting figures and intervals."

Ben Ratliff (The New York Times) OCtober 26, 2003