Photo credit: Melissa Miller
There may have been no better way to reintroduce jazz into the musical menu at the Prospect Avenue Colectivo Coffee’s Back Room than the Avishai Cohen Quartet’s appearance there Saturday night. The interplay of musicians, intimate atmosphere and a mix from the board that kept the sound startlingly crisp made for a nigh-magical evening.
Cohen’s star as a trumpeter has been on the ascent for the past several years. His debut album as a bandleader, this year’s Into The Silence, however, was born out of a circumstance that would bring most anyone low. As an expression of grief over his father’s death, Silence translates into a more universal statement expressing perseverance and finding one’s way amid devastating loss. Though none of the musicians accompanying him on the album joined him on Colectivo’s compact stage, the players with him there sounded to be at least as simpatico with their horn-playing leader as those accompanying him in the studio for the original recordings.
Cohen began in a lighter mood, however, with an expansive run through the Broadway show tune standard, “April In Paris.” The immaculately bearded frontman spoke after its completion of how it was a way to test the room and the vibe of the audience, but it may also have acted as a more melodically accessible apéritif before the band started in on Silence’s more challenging main course.
The improvisational liberties taken with the material, perhaps especially with Justin Brown’s drumming that careened into post-bop and free jazz terrain, upright acoustic bassist Tal Mashiach’s sometimes feverish plucking and steadier bowing and a piano whose strings were sometimes treated by hand in an effect resembling what might have resulted had John Cage had his way with a sitar, made for listening just as compelling as the source material. Cohen’s choice of pianist may have prompted some ticket purchases by rock listeners who might not otherwise patronize a jazz date; keyboardist Jason Lindner’s contributions to David Bowie’s final album, Blackstar, have doubtless raised his profile in recent months. Yet he and Cohen’s other collaborators were often grinning at each other in the mutually joyous recognition of creating something wondrous, however ephemeral, as live music.
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Cohen’s and Lindner’s stage collaborating even broached a sonic threshold the more seasoned jazz fan accompanying me had not ever witnessed. At one point in the mournful song cycle the quartet was assaying, Cohen blew his instrument onto the resting strings of Lindner’s open baby grand, thereby creating ethereal harmonies seemingly appropriate to the thematic context of the material. Moments like those more than compensated for the lack of the saxophone present on the recorded iteration of Silence.
After applause that rose in its enthusiasm as it continued, the band returned for an encore of Lindner’s “Meditation on Two Chords,” ending an evening of exploratory, invigorating musicianship with a serene benediction.