Disk of 2021
Avishai Cohen - album 'Two Roses' - Jazzy hour, June 1st, 2021
Many musicians want to record an album with a symphony orchestra, but very few succeed, the reasons being multiple. Popularity, budget, but especially musical fit. Today we have a happy example, in which the ability to write memorable themes leads to a production of rare beauty, whose grandeur is transposed into the naturalness of orchestration, emotion and personal expression. Avishai Cohen sang his compositions, mostly in trio formula, until they became part of it.
Predisposed to an enlarged adaptation, the pieces put the brilliant musician in the position of dreaming of singing with a symphony orchestra. The vigor of his music can transmit the intensity in a musical ensemble that manifests itself more fully, totally different from a trio. Three musicians immediately synchronize to a measure, while a group of 92 musicians show an inertia that can be understood by watching the score and breathing. Avishai Cohen has been thinking about this experience for more than ten years.
The masterpiece called "Two Roses" is the result of a long process, which shows that his foray into the world of classical music was not a passing whim, but the sincere expression of his desire to dissolve the lines between genres, to exclude the need for classification at the time of musical audition. . Therefore, the connection between his trio, completed by the Azerbaijani pianist Elchin Shirinov and the American drummer Mark Guiliana and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Alexander Hanson, seems natural and harmonized by exceptional qualities.
And the transposition of the rhythmic complexity and the historical and aesthetic influence of Avishai Cohen into a massive structure offers us a strong and specific experience, a journey into the world of a world musician who feels at home where he plays his music.