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Stories   >   Avishai Cohen's 'Naked Truth.' Spacious, lyrical and slightly melancholic / Financial Times

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Avishai Cohen's 'Naked Truth.' Spacious, lyrical and slightly melancholic / Financial Times

Posted: March 4, 2022

The Israeli trumpeter’s latest album presents existential musings with a sweeping splendour and a minimum of fuss

There is a searching, yearning quality to Naked Truth, and a raw beauty and vulnerability in Avishai Cohen’s trumpet sound throughout. Very much music-of-the moment, found and shaped in the course of a remarkable recording session in the South of France, Naked Truth takes the form of an extemporaneous suite. For most of its length the Israeli trumpeter painstakingly leads the way, closely shadowed by his long-time comrades – pianist Yonathan Avishai, bassist Barak Mori and drummer Ziv Ravitz - who share an intuitive understanding, hyper alert to the music’s subtly-changing emphases. At the album’s conclusion, Cohen recites “Departure”, a poem by Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky, whose themes of renunciation, acceptance and letting go seem optimally-attuned to the mood of the music.

Avishai describes the album as the outcome of a “two-year meditation. I had been sitting with the main motif of Naked Truth since the start of Covid. The eight note motif you hear at the start of Part II was the beginning of the whole process. I wouldn’t say the motif has been ‘haunting’ me exactly, but it’s been accompanying me through this whole period and everything that I came to assemble for the album revolved around those eight notes and all the possibilities within them. 

“And as I explored that, a lot of other questions were coming up, as I asked myself what do I want to say in the music, what do I need to say. And the process also came to reflect a personal, emotional journey.” There were two parallel stories unfolding, he elaborates, the search for the compositional framework, and something more existential.

Naked Truth was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines, in September 2021, and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Financial Times - Mike Hobart writes…Israeli trumpeter Avishai Cohen describes his latest work, a largely improvised nine-part suite, as the end-product of a two-year meditation. The process began early in the pandemic with a motif that, once conjured, refused to go away; introducing “Part II” as ripples of piano, it returns in various guises later in the work. But for the most part, the suite’s strong emotions are launched by sonic fragments from Cohen’s simpatico band: a hiss of cymbals and a roll of mallets on “Part IV”, on “Part V” a sequence of passing chords.

Cohen’s trumpet style brings together brooding Harmon mute, European influences and perfectly pitched sustains that soar on high. He now forges that somewhat eclectic mix into a forceful personal voice that pairs each musical train of thought to its core. On this release, his accompanists are equally astute. Spacious, lyrical and slightly melancholic, the album presents Cohen’s existential musings with a sweeping splendour and a minimum of fuss.

The suite opens with sparse notes of Barak Mori’s rich-toned and resonant bass supporting plaintive Cohen trumpet, each line phrased precisely with just a hint of breath. Cohen adds mute for “Part II”, sustaining notes with arpeggiated piano underneath. On “Part III”, the tempo quickens, and flurries of muted trumpet fly over a major key before a roll of mallets introduces “Part IV”, the album’s longest track. Here, Cohen ruminates in the lower register while piano and drums knit perfectly in support.

Pianist Yonathan Avishai has a solo feature mid-set, followed by a short showcase for Ziv Ravitz on drums. Cohen returns muted, moody and hinting at song on “Part VII”, playing over dark-toned piano. On “Part VIII” he brashly energises the mood while piano and drums ebb, flow and shift dynamics underneath.

The album ends with Cohen’s pristine reading of “Departure”, a poetic reflection on mortality by the late Israeli writer Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky. As her sombre words confirm the album’s existential themes, piano, bass and drums combine delicately underneath.

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