The Hope: A Shimmering Shadow

| Tyran Grillo

The word hope conjures images of things longed for, of that which has yet to be seen, felt, and known as a part of one’s lived experience. There is also a sense in which hope may be manifested as something physical. Thus, the Hope Diamond serves not only as the inspiration for this fragrance from the London-based house of Thameen; it imbues every tendril of its sillage with the promise of prestige. Abiding in a similarly blue bottle, itself a vessel in which the future may be tinctured, this is luxury for its own sake, devoid of social baggage and offered nakedly as if beauty were as necessary as breathing—and are not both integral to this masterful olfactory experience?

From the opening, we get a love nibble on one ear of pink pepper, cinnamon bark, and cloves while frankincense and cardamom whisper in the other. The combination is extraordinary. Calming and unforced, it throws a blanket over the caution of our lives as if to soothe it against the wiles of the world. With so much warmth to be savored, it is a most appropriate perfume for wintry nights on which the occasional caress of comfort is all that’s needed to remind ourselves that the best is yet to come.

If these initial stirrings constitute a sonata, then the middle notes of patchouli, white cedar wood, and Immortelle flower give us an earthier symphony of sun-kissed memories. Buried in this soft tangle is the leather of nagarmotha, which casts its shadow like a wandering trader who smells of everything he carries in his pack. That feeling of being lived in is what makes The Hope such a genuine journey from start to finish.

As if to reinforce this image, at the base, we have a swirling postlude of labdanum, musks, Haitian vetiver, and olibanum, all of which shoulder their own storied pasts. As intimate as they are far-reaching, they are a vocalise of the heart. Indeed, words fall short of describing this seamless blend. It would be far better, perhaps, to depend on the language of the body to evoke all it brings to mind (and, in that capacity, I would fail even more). And so, let its gestures embrace you as they will.

Duo Gazzana: Tõnu Kõrvits/Robert Schumann/Edvard Grieg (ECM New Series 2706)

| Tyran Grillo

Duo Gazzana
Tõnu Kõrvits/Robert Schumann/Edvard Grieg

Natascia Gazzana violin
Raffaella Gazzana piano
Recorded November 2021, Reitstadel Neumarkt
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Cover photo: Luciano Rossetti
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: November 18, 2022

A new recording from the Gazzana sisters—Natascia on violin and Raffaella on piano—is always something to celebrate. But what they now present may be their finest in terms of programming, thoughtfulness, passion, and self-control. Making a special case for this assertion are the subtle shades of Tõnu Kõrvits’s Stalker Suite (2017), one of two pieces written for the duo by the Estonian composer. Despite being an homage to Andrei Tarkovsky’s eponymous masterpiece, the music occupies a world unto itself, not least because of its performers’ unobfuscated humanity. From the soft metallic pianism that introduces “Into The Zone,” we relive at least some of that journey, which seems to go deeper vertically the more it proceeds horizontally into abandoned areas of non-existence and timeless looping.

Kõrvits doesn’t so much describe the imagination of cinema but rather the imagination incinema. When the film’s characters, for instance, enter “The Room,” their musical equivalent doesn’t seek to recreate those dilapidated walls, the waterlogged detritus of lives unlived, or the ringing phone. Instead, it lives in the quiet unrest of a mind led by the hand to a mirror in which images disappear as quickly as they manifest.

As the Stalker notes in his “Monologue,” what we call passion is the friction between souls and the lives of the bodies they inhabit. Weakness, he goes on to say, is the companion of birth, whereas strength is the accompaniment of death. Thus, every note wavers in the delicate metaphysical tension between the two. Rich and pliant yet fiercely resolute against the blinding light, it touches the periphery that is no periphery. If anything is programmatic here, it is “Waterfall,” but even this comes with an implied proviso: You must not treat the image as an idol, for faith comes by hearing, not seeing. The Zone has been internal all along.

Notturni (2014), also in four parts, delineates another porous architectural enclosure. Kõrvits’s penchant for brevity is philosophically and hermeneutically suited to these pieces, which take ideas not as excuses for grand expounding or soliloquizing but as poems in miniature. And if a nocturne is supposed to be about the night, then these modern examples of the form show us that a darkened sky reveals what the daylight obscures with its glare. The relationship between piano and violin is especially profound in the third piece, where fluttering high notes in the keys mesh genuinely with lower voicings in the bow.

Between these modern ores lies the polished gemstone that is Robert Schumann’s Sonata No. 1 in A minor, op. 105, of 1851. In its flowering opening movement, the violin’s G string resounds like an alto in the forest. In the Gazzanas’ hands, it feels as natural as sunrise. Although formally divided into three movements, the central one being the most searching in its cautious approach, it finds resolution in the recession of its character. The folk-like qualities of its final act are a testament to the inner struggle of a composer wanting to look to the soil without having to trip over those buried therein.

Finishing out the program is the Sonata No. 3 in C minor, op. 45 (1887) by Edvard Grieg. For this rendering, they default to the composer’s own copy, which differs from the first published edition. The differences accentuate the Norwegian character, drawn by flowing brushwork and sometimes-gnarled textures. If the first movement is a robust ode to origins, then the second, marked “Allegretto espressivo alla Romanza,” is a contemplative gush of loving kindness. Moving in slow motion, it calms us before the storm of the final dance revels in a palette’s worth of colors. The Gazzanas masterfully navigate every twist and turn in this lush and yielding landscape. At once songlike and exuberant, they allow every glint of meaning to shine through to the rousing end.

Alexander Knaifel: Chapter Eight (ECM New Series 2637)

| Tyran Grillo

Alexander Knaifel
Chapter Eight

Patrick Demenga violoncello
State Choir Latvija
Riga Cathedral Boys Choir
Youth Choir Kamēr
Andres Mustonen conductor
Concert recording, March 2009
Jesuitenkirche Luzern
Engineer: Charles Suter
Assistant Engineers: Urs Dürr, Ruedi Wild
Executive Producer (SRF): Rolf Grolimund
Cover: Eberhard Ross
Co-production ECM Records/Radio SRF 2 Kulture
Release date: March 14, 2025

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.
–Song of Songs 8:6

The music of Alexander Knaifel (1943-2024) is a chain of lakes in the ECM New Series landscape. In this latest release, consisting of the slow-motion embrace that is Chapter Eight (1992/93), we encounter his setting of the eighth chapter of the Song of Songs. Conceived as a “community prayer,” it places a cello (played here by Patrick Demenga) at the center of three choirs arranged crosswise in a cathedral, itself listed among the instrumentation in the score.

Demenga is the welcomer whose song leads the way as the voices emerge from the wood- and stonework of the space itself, where human hands have left behind forms we can hear, see, and touch. Such tactility is at the heart of everything Knaifel composed. By stretching words and images to their breaking point, he showed how fragile our relationship to sound really is. For that reason alone, we should not be surprised that Chapter Eight is not a straightforward rendering of its source text, as verses are reordered, and not every one is accounted for. Some are also repeated (verse 1 appears six times, verse 6 appears five times, etc.), and by the time we get to the last of the piece’s 32 stanzas, we are reduced to fragments thereof. In that reduction, however, lies the key to understanding the truth we are being given: Scripture is nothing without its orality. And so, by favoring these far-reaching suspensions in his choral writing, the composer is redefining transcendence not as overcoming of the physical but as a manifestation of the liminal. The world seems to stop spinning, the clouds are no longer moving, and the sun is held in its dial. Through it all, the cello is a thread pulled through a veil not of our own making.

Although the passionate dialogue of Song of Songs is often read as a metaphor between the Jewish and Gentile churches at a time when Christ’s reconciliation had yet to be born out through the new covenant, Knaifel goes one layer deeper to highlight such tensions in every believing heart. While the cello and choirs become more unified in vision, they turn rapture into capture, whereby the body-solvent spirit is held gently in place by God’s plan. The repeated verses remind us that we must never leave others behind in our spiritual walk and that salvation is never ultimately about the self but is a means of glorifying the one who bestows it. The lover’s jealousy, therefore, is that of a God who hopes that all of us might lay our heads in his bosom. We feel this when Demenga’s bow falls from its perch (high notes like lasers through the mind) and scrapes the bottom of its fleshly allegiances (low notes like rusty chains through the heart). The singers move methodically, each syllable becoming a verse unto itself, the roles of call and response gradually reversing.

Thus, the pace of time becomes distorted, like seeing the world through a window down which drips a quiet rain. The storm is the language of faith, a test of our immaterial resolve against the material. And when we fail, we are ready to be lifted again and remade in the image of what we are meant for. And as these forces meet in the middle, they stand at the intersection of all things, whispering, “The unfinished statement is where life begins.”

This is music you can leave on to exist on its own terms until it becomes a part of the architecture you call home.

Lucian Ban/Mat Maneri: Transylvanian Dance (ECM 2824)

| Tyran Grillo

Lucian Ban
Mat Maneri
Transylvanian Dance

Mat Maneri viola
Lucian Ban piano
Recorded live at CJT Hall in Timișoara, October 29, 2022
Recording engineer: Utu Pascu
Mixing: Steve Lake and Michael Hinreiner (engineer)
at Bavaria Musikstudios, Munich
Cover photo: Romania farm scene, 1919 (courtesy Library of Congress, Washington)
Album produced by Steve Lake
Release date: August 30, 2024

Transylvanian Dance is the long-awaited follow-up to 2013’s Transylvanian Concert. The latter ECM debut of pianist Lucian Ban and violist Mat Maneri’s collaboration was a landmark showcasing the duo’s ability to immerse and blend in a partnership written in the stars. The present program, recorded live in October 2022 in the context of the Retracing Bartók project in Timișoara, is based entirely on songs and dances collected by Béla Bartók in Transylvania. And yet, the recapitulation of this music is more than a gesture of preservation; it’s an act of solidarity. If Ban and Maneri are archaeologists, they regard every artifact on its own terms. Rather than dust off the caked sediment, they appreciate it as a part of what the object has become.

In his liner notes for the album, Steve Lake invokes the “treasure-house,” a term used by Bartók and fellow composer Zoltán Kodáldy to describe the folksongs that may have gone lost without their efforts and one that feels duly appropriate to label the container built by these four hands. Drawing from his own experience growing up in Transylvania, Ban stains the wood with an ancestral quality, while Maneri carves adornments patterned after the imprints of far-reaching histories from within.

Open the door and take any interpretation stored a few steps beyond it, and you’re sure to find something to connect to. That being said, “Poor Is My Heart” is about as sparkling an introduction as one could hope for into this archive of still photographs come to life. To be welcomed into this space so freely is more than a privilege; it speaks to the human right of free expression against tyrannies of silence. Appropriately, the pianism is lithe yet strong, while the viola is a pliant voice that speaks of reeds and winds from bygone eras, its harmonics turning shafts of recollection into particles of real-time action. Like the title track later in the program, it keeps no secrets from us. However near or far the musicians feel, their balance of extroversion and introversion is superbly rendered. If Ban is the earth, then Maneri is the tiller of its collective memories. “Romanian Folk Dance” is another ripe harvest. Through disjointed yet natural movements, it breathes with an unsettled (but never unsettling) quality. The instruments circle each other, closing but never tightening the knot past the point of loosening.

What might seem to be a discerning focus on revelry is the oxygen for the darker flames of “Lover Mine Of Long Ago,” which treats its garments as layers of skin to be shed at will. Ban’s exploration of the piano’s inner strings, whether by plucking or muting, polishes a dowry of coins and other trinkets to be left behind with it. Meanwhile, “The Enchanted Stag” is a keening hymn in which bluesy accents bend to the will of the compass’s needle. Both “Harvest Moon Ballad” and “The Boyar’s Doina” turn the concept of the soul into a playing style. Wavering yet never faltering, each is a house creaking in the night, reminding us of the fragility of what we call home. Settling ever deeper into the ground, their candlelit windows beacons for wandering dreamers, they create a breezeway for the final song, “Make Me, Lord, Slim And Tall.” Not a single note feels wasted: percolating, germinating, and fragrant as a forest floor after the rain. With so much fertility, we can only wonder at the gifts it will yield with repeat listens.

Dine Doneff: Suite Yedi (neRED/4)

| Tyran Grillo

James Wylie alto saxophone
Maria Dafka bayan
Dine Doneff electric guitar, stomp box, double bass, drums
Recorded live September 3, 2023
Festival of Jazz, World & Contemporary Music
Teatar Jordan H.K. Dzinot – Veles, North Macedonia
Recording engineer: Ivica Jankulovski
Remix: Dine Doneff – Domagk Cell 27, Munich
Mastering: Christoph Stickel
Cover artwork & design: Fotimi Potamia
Produced by neRED music

Just as death is eternal
So the struggle goes forever.
–Kocho Racin

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Dine Doneff calls Suite Yedi, the fourth installment of his ECM-distributed label neRED, a “sound sketch of narratives about resistance.” And so, before a single musical utterance, we are implicitly asked to consider what resistance entails. Most, I imagine, would view it as a method of opposition, whether at the individual or collective level, to some malevolent force wreaking havoc on the world on any scale. But when the bayan of Maria Dafka—one of three musicians who make up the band recorded live here under the auspices of the 2023 Festival of Jazz, World & Contemporary Music in Macedonia—unfolds in the darkness of its own regard, a deeper meaning is revealed. For while the accordion-like instrument is solitary, it comprises the voices of its ancestors and the many who share them. It is a chorus in one body sustained by multiple vectors of identity. The effect is such that when alto saxophonist James Wylie and Doneff himself on electric guitar render for us the y and z axes of this opening tune (appropriately called “Of the Memory”), we realize that resistance is ultimately not about opposition to but unity with. Just as one can be silenced by many, so can many be given hope by one.
 
Doneff’s guitar is an extension of his writing, which is the program’s backbone. Between the flowing traffic of “Yaros” and the offroading spirit of “Howl,” he merges onto and off our lane as if time were a highway to be traveled along at will. The latter’s country twang offers freer energy as Wylie stretches out his arms toward the horizon with a running start—and yet, beneath it all, the need to scream—paring down to Doneff on bass in a prayerful mode. This anchor carries over into “Naked Life,” where chords and melodies change places in stenciled light.
 
Between these milestones, we encounter the birthing pains of “Risserete,” wherein the bayan and alto meld as one while the guitar emerges aboveground, holding a scripture of its past in the hopes that a future might be possible. Dafka’s solo is a constellation shining through a smoke-tinged sky before resolving into Wylie’s monologue. Thus, each soul speaks for itself—another model for finding purpose. Doneff adds drums to make good on the promise of proximity and holds that pattern in “Minoria Grande,” allowing the theme to coalesce in a reunion that not even violence may hinder.
 
The performance closes with a contrasting diptych. Whereas “Another Chance” takes a forlorn look at things, the alto a picture of frustration resolving into fate but pulling away just before the grip of shadow becomes too ironclad to shake off, “Boombar” shines a light with its groovier bass line, a nod to how things used to be and how they might one day be again. Thus, we are reminded that, sometimes, catharsis does not happen all at once but gradually over time. In such an age as ours, where uncertainty has become the new normal (or has it always been this way?), the promise of comforts one can rely on becomes a treasure to be unearthed one footprint at a time.

András Schiff: J. S. Bach – Clavichord (ECM New Series 2635/36)

| Tyran Grillo

András Schiff
J. S. Bach: Clavichord

András Schiff clavichord
Recorded July 2018
Kammermusikssaal H. J. Abs,
Beethoven-Haus, Bonn
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Cover photo: Jan Jedlička
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: January 27, 2023

“When I’m at home, my day always begins with Bach. It used to be on the piano, now it’s on the clavichord, even before breakfast. After a few of the Inventions I feel reborn. My ears, my mind, soul and spirit are cleansed.”

Few keyboardic constructions feel as tangible as the clavichord. If only for that reason, it takes getting used to. Yet if you are willing to meet it on its own terms, its internal resonances and breadth of character soon become apparent. As the go-to of Johann Sebastian Bach, it deserves a spotlight in this music—not only for its sound but also for its spirit. For while its intimacy is a given (allowing as it did the luxury of private interpretation for both composers and enthusiasts), and its history and Bach’s relationship to it are well documented, there’s something about letting it sing for itself, and I can think of few hands more capable of doing just that than those of pianist András Schiff, whose humble admission crowns this review.
 
The six-part Capriccio sopra la lontananza del fratello dilettissimo (Capriccio on the departure of a beloved brother) is a delightful inauguration to the instrument’s flavor. Though lesser known than the Inventions and Sinfonias (a.k.a., the Two- and Three-Part Inventions, split between this album’s two discs), they speak nakedly and with the programmatic lucidity required of them. The bigger, canonical collection after them dons new garments (if not sheds old ones) in the present recording. Knowing that Bach likely intended them for the clavichord gives us a renewed understanding of their provenance. The faster movements (cf. Invention No. 4 in d minor, Sinfonia No. 15 in b minor) sparkle, while the slower ones (cf. Invention No. 2 in c minor, Sinfonia No. 4 in d minor) feel more robust than ever. The middle realm (cf. Invention No. 15 in b minor, Sinfonia No. 11 in g minor) gives us the best of both worlds. Such is the magic of the clavichord: Despite its slimmer character and build, it holds its own and then some in a basket woven of lower pitch (a’ = 404 Hz). One highlight in this regard is the lutelike Sinfonia No. 9 in f minor, which walks up a flight of stairs, making the pull of gravity palpable.
 
Between these are the Four Duets (of which No. 3 in G major is especially wholesome) and the Ricercar à 3 from Das Musikalische Opfere, which, along with the concluding Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, is the biggest revelation herein. Whereas the orchestral sensibilities in one are still very much alive, albeit refracted and distilled, the other shows the subtlety of the “Bebung” technique, whereby the performer adds vibrato with vertical pressure of the fingertip. Thus, these pieces’ complexities become more apparent because they cannot hide within the piano’s cavernous architecture. The fugue is a wonder. Feet to ground, it knows where it stands and how to take joy in the life it has been freely given.

Ruth Killius/Thomas Zehetmair: Bartók/Casken/Beethoven (ECM New Series 2595)

| Tyran Grillo

Ruth Killius/Thomas Zehetmair
Bartók/Casken/Beethoven

Thomas Zehetmair violin, conductor
Ruth Killius viola
Royal Northern Sinfonia
Recorded live June 2014
at The Sage Gateshead
Engineer: Hannelore Guittet
Cover photo: Max Franosch
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: February 17, 2023

The triptych on offer here is proof positive of violinist Thomas Zehetmair’s boldness as a conductor. With his wife, violist Ruth Killius, he brings together an intriguing assortment at the helm of the Royal Northern Sinfonia. Most surprising is British composer John Casken’s That Subtle Knot, which receives its premiere recording. This double concerto for violin, viola, and orchestra was written in 2012-13 and is dedicated to the present performers. Taking its inspiration from the poetry of John Donne, whose characteristic attention to physiological detail is beautifully mirrored throughout, it charts a course of passionate complexity through two movements. The lone viola of “Calm” unfolds in an unnamed wilderness, searching its past but finding traces of the future. As the violin steps foot onto the same landscape a divider’s distance away, the orchestra hints at natural obstacles between them: a mountain face, a ravine, a river too wide to cross. And yet, none of this bars one from knowing and empathizing with the other. Moments of dance-like energy are necessarily brief so that even when they reach a state of agreement, it is always mediated through the environment. Despite its title, “Floating” is rife with dramatic highs and lows. If anything, it floats in the sense of something being tossed about in the wind and never being allowed to land until it has been battered and bruised. Like a human relationship, it weathers the storm, finding its bearings the emotional lessons it has learned. The high note on which it ends is a testament to the power of perseverance.

What a fascinating companion this work has in the form of Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. Although largely considered his final work, despite some controversy to the contrary, it is a shot in the dark of the year in which it was written (1945). Regardless of provenance and subsequent revisions, it proves itself more than ever to be a beacon of the viola repertoire at the touch of Killius’s bow. She arrives on the scene in a burst of light, courting the orchestra into a dance of knotted proportions. The more the Moderato develops, the tighter that knot becomes, unraveling itself only in dreams. There is nothing inviting or conciliatory about the viola’s restlessness. It is always unsettled, and therein lies the spell. Speaking of spells, one cannot help but be enchanted by the central movement, which speaks to the heart of this piece and its composer. Its brevity after the gargantuan first makes it all the more poignant. In the last, marked Allegro vivace, a superb articulation abounds. Every thought—both on paper and in the minds of those interpreting it—is lucid to the core, working into a concise and spirited finish.

And where to end this three-legged race? Why, in the well-worn yet crucial binding of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth, of course. The urgency of its familiar opening statement is given special urgency while still giving those pastoral asides room to breathe. What is remarkable is that, despite this energy, which carries over even into the flowing violins of the slower second movement, the winds are never drowned. Rather, they speak like a Greek chorus, carrying omniscience in their hands. Also notable is the sheer delicacy of the pizzicato in the third movement, so crisply captured in this recording, and the breadth of the concluding Allegro, in which a not-so-subtle knot of grace and affirmation ties itself before our very ears.

Danish String Quartet: PRISM V (ECM New Series 2565)

| Tyran Grillo

Danish String Quartet
PRISM V

Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen violin
Frederik Øland violin
Asbjørn Nørgaard viola
Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin violoncello
Recorded June 2021
Festsal, KFUM/KFUK, Copenhagen
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Cover: Eberhard Ross
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: April 14, 2023

The Danish String Quartet concludes its nearly eight-year journey pairing Ludwig van Beethoven’s five late string quartets with works by Johann Sebastian Bach and later composers. Looking back, I can’t help but smile at how deeply and patiently the DSQ has fertilized the soil of this project to yield the richness of spring harvest.

As the musicians humbly observe, “Micromanagement is rarely a successful strategy when it comes to late Beethoven.” Therefore, if the music feels almost fiercely detailed, it’s because the relationships between the notes speak up for themselves at every turn. Indeed, it’s impossible to encounter the initial stirrings of the String Quartet No. 16 in F major, op. 135, wherein the composer returns not only to the quadripartite form but also to his astonishment of the past, without blushing. And what, you might wonder, is immediately apparent this time around? Nothing less than the undeniable realization that the late Beethoven deviates from other “standard” quartets of the repertoire (including his earlier own) in how inevitable it feels. Whether in the lucidity of the second movement or the dark pastoralism of the third, every sound takes on a physical appearance. The sheer grit the Danes bring to these contrasts is wonderous. Whereas the faster rites of passage would give little room for personal interpretation in less capable hands, in the present context, they are vessels in which the pudding of proof is artfully mixed. In the final stretch, which begins in gentler territory while also expressing great urgency, the call and response between cello and violins opens the door into a run across an open field where life itself becomes the map leading the way to the other side.

Anton Webern’s String Quartet of 1905 (the second of two he wrote that year) brought about a sea change in the genre. Although played in one continuous 18-minute stretch, it takes on a nominal structure in three sections (“Becoming,” “Being,” “Passing Away”) based on the work of painter Giovanni Segantini. Its shifts between darker and lighter keys, between exhalations and holdings of breath, would seem to mirror Beethoven, while its central fugue casts a shadow further back to Bach. The more one immerses oneself in it, the more fragmentary it becomes. As with the canvases that inspired it, one is tempted to isolate a mountain from land and sky, all the while missing out on the benefit of zooming in further on individual plants, puffs of cloud, and rocky imperfections that can only be described as “hymnal” in shape.

The setting for these diamonds consists of Baroque prongs. Whereas Bach’s chorale prelude, Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit, opens the program as one would wake up from a coma only to realize how much the world has not changed, the Contrapunctus XIV from The Art of Fuguereleases its pollen by the light of the moon, windswept in evening breezes to places we cannot touch until our bodies wither. Being unfinished, it ends mid-statement, leaving the remainder to toss about in the waves of our unworthy fancy. Sometimes, the best way to answer a question is by posing another.

Avishai Cohen: Ashes to Gold (ECM 2822)

| Tyran Grillo

Avishai Cohen
Ashes to Gold

Avishai Cohen trumpet, flugelhorn, flute
Yonathan Avishai piano
Barak Mori double bass
Ziv Ravitz drums
Recorded November 2022 at Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineer: Gérard de Haro
Mastering: Nicolas Baillard
Production coordination: Thomas Herr
Cover: Avishai Cohen
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: October 11, 2024

Since sewing his ECM leader debut with 2016’s Into The Silence, Avishai Cohen has reaped a unique voice as a trumpeter and composer. But in “Ashes to Gold,” the five-part suite from which his latest gets its name, we are introduced to the sound of his flute, which speaks of more harmonious times than these. Like the opening credits to a war film, it offers the dramatis personae—including pianist Yonathan Avishai, bassist Barak Mori, and drummer Ziv Ratiz—before throwing us into a battle scene from the start. In that vein, the trumpeting jolts us with its raw emotional reportage straight from the trenches.

By no stretch of metaphor, the music’s genesis took place in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, during which the chaos of war at once starved and fed Cohen’s inspiration. One week of intense writing later, the suite was born. While adding to and refining it on tour, he crafted the theme that would become the introspective Part III. Part II before it is its meditative ancestor, featuring a droning arco bass, keening brass, chanting pianism, and a heartbeat giving hope of survival beneath the debris. In the wake of Part IV, an interlude for flute and piano that turns light into shadow, the flowing conclusion finds Cohen soaring as a messenger bird with the sole remaining fragment of truth in its talons. 

Following this is the Adagio assai from Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, a staple in the band’s live repertoire. In this context, it serves as a lost hymn, fusing fragments of the past with the utmost attention to form. “The Seventh” (by Cohen’s daughter Amalia) provides the epilogue. Every flower that sprouts from its dying soil releases spores in the hopes that, at the very least, it might find richer land even as cities and their inhabitants fall.

It’s worth noting that the title Ashes to Gold refers to the kintsugi, the Japanese aesthetic practice of filling cracks in pottery with gold. Thus, he seals the traumatic ruptures of our humanity with music. And is that not what music does in times of unrest? It is a salve of retribution, physically applied to wounded fists closing around life itself.