Caught Avishai Cohen's first set at The Jazz Gallery last night. No, not that Avishai Cohen (although he's great too). This Avishai Cohen -- the trumpet-playing guy. He led an impressive quintet featuring Mark Turner, Jason Lindner, Omer Avital, and Greg Hutchinson.
Avishai is a firebrand with chops to burn, able to pull off sudden shifts of register and blistering high chromatic flurries with ease. But he's also an intelligent and methodical player with a good head for motivic construction and long-term pacing. On one tune last night, he made subtle but effective use of electronics (wah-wah and digital delay). The highlight of the set was Omer Avital's head on "Giant Steps" changes, called (I think) "Flow" (a tune I'd heard Avital's own group play earlier in the week at Fat Cat). Avital kicked things off with a nice fat bass groove, followed by an agile solo. Jason Lindner set himself up on synthesizer before digging in on acoustic piano. Mark Turner danced around and over the chord progression, playing with a lyricism you don't often get when you sic a tenor player on "Giant Steps." Avishai, picking up on something Mark played, spent his first chorus working through increasingly abstracted variations on the opening of The Rite of Spring, as the rhythm section came down and almost dispersed beneath him, before Greg Hutchinson gradually brought up the heat again for the explosive finish.
Avishai is at the Jazz Gallery again tonight for two sets (9 PM & 10:30 PM). $15 cover ($10 for Gallery members).
Giant Steps
'Cohens' musicians must have something with that tune; you find a Coltrane changes-based tune also on bassist Cohen's latest - and really really tame - CD, "At Home "(I think that's the title).
A.C. the trumpeter is terrific, wish I had been there.
Marco
Posted by: Marco | 07 February 2006 at 05:55 AM