When describing trumpeter Avishai Cohen, The Guardian said “every generation of jazz trumpeters revisits the legacy of Miles Davis in their own ways, but the Israeli rising star Avishai Cohen’s version of the journey has been particularly skillful.” In 2017, a year after his impressionistic, award winning, and critically-lauded ECM debut Into The Silence, Cohen’s sophomore release for ECM Cross My Palm With Silver introduced audiences to a new collection of pieces highlighting his exceptional quartet. The adroit, almost telepathic interplay among the musicians allows Avishai Cohen to soar, making it clear why he is one of the most talked-about jazz musicians on the contemporary scene. “All of these people together are my dream team”, says the charismatic trumpeter of fellow players Yonathan Avishai, Barak Mori and Ziv Ravitz, who share his sense for daring improvisation and his feeling for structure. “I feel we’re in a perfect place with the balance. It’s open and there’s so much room for the improvisation to take the music any place we can. At the same time the composition is very specific and the vibe is very direct and thought about.” As with ‘Into The Silence’, Cross My Palm With Silver was produced by Manfred Eicher at Studios La Buissonne in the south of France.

The trumpeter began performing in public in 1988 at age 10, playing his first solos with a big band and eventually touring with the Young Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra to perform under the likes of maestros Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur and Kent Nagano. Having worked with Israeli folk and pop artists in his native country and appeared on television early on, Cohen arrived as an experienced professional musician when he took up a full scholarship at Berklee College of Music in Boston. In 1997, the young musician established an international reputation by placing third in the Thelonious Monk Jazz Trumpet Competition. Avishai came of age as a jazz player as part of the fertile scene at the club Smalls in New York’s West Village.

Cohen is now globally recognized as a musician with an individual sound and a questing spirit, an ever-creative player-composer open to multiple strains of jazz and active as a leader, co-leader and sideman. Aside from the acclaimed work with his quartet over the last several years, and previously his trio work under the moniker Triveni, the trumpeter has also recorded and toured the world as part of the Mark Turner Quartet, the SFJAZZ Collective, Jazz100 (with Danilo Perez, Chris Potter, etc.) Zakir Hussain, and the 3 Cohens Sextet – with his sister, clarinetist-saxophonist Anat, and brother, saxophonist Yuval. Cohen’s electric project BIG VICIOUS, featuring two guitarists and two drummers, has won a devoted audience at international festivals. Named as the Artistic Director of the International Jerusalem Festival, Cohen has also been voted a Rising Star on three consecutive occasions in the DownBeat Critics Poll.