Avishai Cohen - Ashes To Gold (ECM, 2024)

By Don Phipps

Avishai Cohen’s Ashes to Gold is a collection of sensitive, carefully crafted tone poems - tone poems which, even though created during a time of war, encompass heroic and soaring passages of great beauty. There is no anger - only melancholy, no regret - only resignation. This, and pastoral note clusters that rise and swoop like an eagle above a distant mountain peak.

Cohen says in the liner notes that he composed his five-movement title cut after October 7. He says, “…by this point (the composition was being written) in the full craziness of wartime. With rockets flying over my head, alarms and sirens going off, and so on. Did all of this affect the music? How could it not?”

On the album, Cohen (trumpet, flugelhorn, flute) is joined by Barak Mori (bass), Ziv Ravitz (drums), and Yonathan Avishai (piano). In addition to Cohen’s opus, the quartet “covers” Ravel’s “Adagio Assai,” a fascinating choice, and a piece by Cohen’s daughter, Amalia - “The Seventh.”

On the first number, the band offers gently uplifting, sympathetic lines in keeping with the mood of the music. For example, Mori’s deep bass bowing is notable. Check out his work at the end of “Part I” of the title cut, where the bass drone is dark and sonorous, or his effort beneath Cohen’s start on “Part II.” And his bass plucking to open “Part III” recalls Charlie Haden at his most intimate.

Whether Cohen is on flute or horn, his playing has a lovely pure forthright tone, even when creating almost bugle-like phrases (as in the middle of “Part I”). Cohen demonstrates his chops on many of the compositions – his ability to use his horn to slide up and down assertively or to howl without pinching the tone is remarkable. But it is the beauty of his expression that truly stands out. Listen to his flugelhorn playing on “Part III,” or his opening on the “Adagio Assai,” which is simultaneously sad and gentle (Note: this work is the second movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, written in 1929-31 during the interlude between the World Wars). And on “Part V,” the first of two masterpieces on this album, you can hear the way his trumpet can reach out and in. On the other album masterpiece, “The Seventh,” Cohen’s flugelhorn lines suggest a graceful swan descending slowly over an undulating sunlit lake.

On piano, Avishai’s agile touch and expressive lines can change with sudden ferocity, but more often his phrases add subtle pastels of feeling to the scores. Check out his entry on “Part IV” to see how his bluesy impressionism adds to the brief movement. Or his wandering start on “Part 5,” with its repetitive series that suggests snow coming down in a light breeze, covering an open field in a drifting natural white blanket.

Ravitz generally confines himself to affect. His understated playing can be heard on “Part II” towards the end, where his bass drum and soft taps undergird the solemn mood of the number. There are times when his drumming sounds like a distant march (as midway in “Part I”). And one can hear how he incrementally integrates percussive effects into the mix of “Part V.”

Perhaps today the world needs albums like Ashes To Gold to reorient and redirect its efforts toward peaceful resolution. If so, this is certainly a welcome addition. Perhaps it is a reflection of what might be or could be – and sadly - not what is.