With his latest and very different album Almah released on the same first day of Avishai Cohen’s latest residency at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club the Israeli bass star, clad in a black T shirt, was joined at the Soho club by pianist Nitai Hershkovits and a fairly late replacement for the originally scheduled drummer Ofri Nehemya, the heavily bearded relative newcomer Daniel Dor. At the beginning of the evening Cohen wasn’t happy with the sound “there’s so much feedback; it’s a big mess on the stage”, but in a brief word to the audience and starting to settle in expressed his love for the club. “I’ve been coming for at least 10 years,” and proceeded to introduce the band. There wasn’t much chat from him in the opening set (Cohen said there wouldn’t be) but there was plenty of time for a lot of music. Opening with ‘Interlude’ a piece the bassist said was so far unrecorded although he hoped it would be, the piece was a charming miniature and almost the deep breath before the involved trio interplay to come. ‘Soof’ from the album Duende was next; and Cohen followed by an exuberant ramping up of speed and energy that drew the audience’s first big break of applause.

Dor is a quiet drummer and at one point later there was a veritable “silent bar” with the drummer then continuing the improvisation on light brushes. It kept the audience guessing and drew smiles from Cohen and Hershkovits, the latter great at providing counter melodies to Cohen’s elaborate figures. The pianist has a strong romantic side to his playing grounded in classical music with little grace notes drawn from Israeli folk music folded in during more expressive runs but provides enough flexibility for Cohen to respond to. Cohen’s solos can have an epic dimension to them, hitting the centre of every note even at great speed with sumptuous tone and ideas and frequently changing tempi also drawing out the percussive side of the instrument while retaining a strong melodic element in his improvising. The three finished off the set with a tune that demonstrated “the not so silent side of Daniel”, and so the stage was set for a residency that is already drawing a big turn-out and continues until Thursday. SG 

Avishai Cohen above Photo: Youri Lenquette