Avishai Cohen is one of the leading trumpeters of our time. He has been compared to the greatest names in jazz history, including Miles Davis. Cohen’s personal, warm tone and narrative energy can be picked out from the many thousands of others. Moreover, he has an insatiable drive to use his compositions to bring together diverse worlds to form a harmonious whole. On his latest release, Ashes To Gold, he sounds more powerful and emotional than on any of the other albums he has released on the ECM record label over the past decade. Cohen recorded Ashes To Gold in November 2023, a month after the start of the terrible conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. It is his poignant cry for an immediate ceasefire. At the festival, the Avishai Cohen Quartet makes clear why music speaks louder than words.
