Here are a couple of artists that keep the listener’s ears wide open…
Trumpeter Avishai Cohen has consistently put our some impressive and creative material since coming to NYC from his homeland of Isreael. This time out, he walks the tightrope without a net, performing in the trio format with Omer Avital/b (who has a fantastic recent release of his own) and Nasheet Waits/dr on this collection of material that mixes Cohen’s own pen with bop and searching left of center material by the likes of Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry.
Cohen’s got a panoramic sound to his horn, willing to range his sound from the entire history of the instrument, from the wah wahing of Bubber Miley, to proto bop of crisp and clean lines to stratospheric searching of post modern. His own material like “Safety Land” and “November 30th” has an impressive flexibility, with the bass and drums lithely keeping the music going forward. Dizzy Gillespies “Woody n’ You” has a razor like sharpness, while Mingus’ “Portrait” is able to shift moods and perspectives like the changing of the angle of a mirror on the sun. A bit outside, but still on the sane side are works b Coleman and Cherry that close the disc, showing that melody and experimentation do not have to be mortal enemies. Impressive stuff here.
In the same vein, Erik Jekabson takes his trumpet, and adds flugelhorn and vibes for one song each here on a collection of originals. He leads a band with flexible artists like Dayna Stephens/ts, Mads Tolling/violin, Charith Prewardhana/viola, John Wiitala/b and Smith Dobson/dr-vibes, so just by looking at the lineup and instruments, you can tell that the sound gets quite intriguing. “Silence” comes across elegiac, while “Strontium” has an almost herky jerky rhythm that eventually gets swinging. Things get quite interesting on “Park Stroll” where you have two seemingly opposing melodies slowly coalesce into one, which occurs again with the strings and horns on the exciting “Afternoon on the Sea, Monhagen.” While the boppish “Portrait of Miss D” snaps with alacrity, the 15 almost cacophonous title track meanders a tad too long. Never short of ideas, most of which work nicely
Anzic Records
Jekab’s Music 002