‘Into the silence’ is trumpeter Avishai Cohen’s debut as leader for the ECM label, and what a breathtaking album it is. […] it is the honesty of Cohen’s music that shines through with a clarity and purity of sound that is stunningly beautiful. The trumpeter plays with a very personal, deeply moving tone that is not only touching and soulful, but also free-spirited and open. [] The whole album has a quiet sincerity to it, yet it’s not without a remarkable spirit, at times lyrical and hauntingly melodic. Cohen takes the lead on most of the tracks, and rightly so, playing with a freshness that is enlightening. I cannot think of many musicians that sound so passionate yet softly understated all in one breath. []there is an intimacy to the whole recording that the listener can almost reach out and touch. It hangs in the air, in the spaces between the notes, in the unspoken thoughts that pass between the performers, in the unwritten poetry that they are making through their music. It is something that can’t quite be defined, something that could so easily be lost if one tried to hold onto it for too long. Luckily for us the spirit of this musical journey is captured beautifully on this recording. A wonderful album.
Mike Gates, UK Vibe
Berührend zart beginnt die CD – blue, so blue, im Geiste verwandt mit der melancholischen Seite von Miles Davis. Viel Pastell, viel Raum, unendlich viel Gefühl.
Ssirus W. Pakzad, Jazzthing
The rhythm team is a marvelously restrained and supportive unit, McHenry playing sparingly and mainly as a supportive second line. The main voice has to be Cohen’s and his trumpet playing is direct, delicate in its phrasing, somehow both elegiac and celebratory at the same time. Every track, even the brief final reprise of ‘Life And Death’ which acts as an epilogue, feels like a rich and complete suite within a suite, the themes and moods waxing and waning, changing and returning along their length. A quietly bold and, I think, important album.
Peter Bacon, the Jazz Breakfast
Da wirkt alles intensiv und eloquent auf den Punkt gebracht. Wobei die musikalische Ganzheit von den profunden Kollegen lebt: Pianist Yonathan Avishai und Tenorsaxofonist Bill McHenry sind mit Cohen in delikatem Gedankenaustausch – wie auch Bassist Eric Revis und Schlagzeuger Nasheet Waits. Das Ganze ist zu 90 Prozent ein Lehrstück, wie sich trotz entschleunigter Grundhaltung jederzeit Innenspannung halten lässt.
Ljubisa Tosic, Der Standard
Der Trompeter Avishai Cohen zeigt auf seinem grandiosen neuen Album, wie man Vorbildern entkommt. Es ist für einen Trompeter mit Hang zu Melancholie wie Avishai Cohen nicht leicht, dem Schatten von Miles Davis zu entkommen. Man stutzt bei seinem neuen Album ‚Into The Silence‘ auch erst einmal. Da spielt er gleich zu Beginn auf der gestopften Trompete über Pausen, mit denen die Rhythmusgruppe fast stärkere Akzente setzt als mit ihrer minimalistischen Begleitung. Das fesselt vom ersten Moment an, weil da eine Vertrautheit entsteht […] Die Melancholie speist sich hier nicht aus dem Kanon des Cool, sondern aus einem Moment des sehr privaten Schmerzes. Cohen schrieb die Stücke in der Zeit nach dem Tod seines Vaters. Wie manisch hörte er damals die Klaviermusik von Sergej Rachmaninow. Diese Wucht reduzierte Cohen auf dem Album konsequent. Zurückhaltung ist Programm. Klavier, Kontrabass und das extrem sparsame Schlagzeug halten die Spannung über das gesamte Album mithilfe dieser strategischen Pausen.
Andrian Kreye, Süddeutsche Zeitung
Trumpeter Avishai Cohen’s beautiful, elegiac ‘Into The Silence’ is a tribute to his late father, who died in 2014. Lesser life changes of a musical nature are also involved […] Cohen assembled a new quintet for the project, and the music is more composed and introspective – the title track, in particular, began as a piano figure that came to Cohen upon his father’s death […] But the five of them sound like they’ve been playing together forever.
Bill Beutler, Jazz Times (Editor’s Pick)
The mournful sad tones of Avishai of the Cohens liken the leader to Miles Davis: muted, underscored with piano/bass/drums plus tenor sax, and filled with a longing that won't ever go away. […] Recorded in the south of France over a period of only three days, ‘Into The Silence’ does not depress the listener but rather instills into the ear a free-flowing amalgam of mellifluous positivism.
Mike Greenblatt, Classicalite
The group members have an organic, focused intensity as if they hang on each phrase together. This intensity is well matched by Eicher's production, which sounds typically warm and full of natural reverb […] with Cohen leading his band through ambient soundscapes that, much like one's emotions after the death of a loved one, are supple and sad one minute, and sharp and tangled the next.
Matt Collar, Allmusic.com
Cohen with his soulful, vocalized tonal nuances and inventively coherent phrasing, is given the space to stretch out through a series of six compositions in which the band’s patient development of Cohen’s thematic sketches capture an elevated, airy ebb-and-flow. […] a mesmerizing exchange of ideas.
Selwyn Harris, Jazzwise
Begleitet von Klavier, Saxofon, Kontrabass und Schlagzeug steigert sich Cohen in eine Intensität, wie man sie eher von der E-Kultur gewohnt ist. Nichts davon wirkt prahlerisch: Das Können der Musiker und ihre Freude am Spiel halten sich die Waage. Ein Miles Davis der Gegenwart – fast zu cool, um wahr zu sein.
Tobias Schmitz, Stern
Tout l’album pourrait d’ailleurs être considéré comme une sorte d’etude sure s infinies possibilities expressives de la sourdine, don’t Avishai Cohen joue avec une sensibilité inégalée. Tourtefois, ‘Into The Silence’ peut se lire plus profondément comme une meditation sur l’absence.
Pascal Rozat, Jazz Magazine
Das Bemerkenswerte bei ‚Into The Silence‘ ist, dass Cohens ausdrucksstarkes und anmutiges Trompetenspiel immer ganz präsent, dabei aber nie vordergründig ist. Er pflegt vielmehr eine Art elegante Zurückhaltung, in der er eine melancholische Verbindung zu den Piano-Blue-Notes, den lyrischen Spiegelungen des Saxofons und dem subtilen Rhythmusduo aufnimmt.
Olaf Maikopf, Jazzthetik
The music radiates with authority. Whether it’s an overt ballad like ‘Life And Death’ or the momentary agitation of the title cut, the program is bolstered by a deeply considered feel. […] a somber program that’s well calibrated, poetic and straight from the heart.
Jim Macnie, Downbeat
Eine der herausragenden Neuerscheinungen dieses Frühjahrs. Es ist ein Werk der schlichten Themen, das seine zerbrechliche Melancholie vor allem im Ensemble (mit Tenorsaxofonist Bill McHenry als Gast) entfaltet. Die Soli und Dialoge, die sich ergeben, wiegen nicht mehr als die Farbtupfer, die jeder im Verbund beisteuert.
Gregor Dotzauer, Tagesspiegel
Der Opener verströmt viel vom Geist des legendären zweiten Miles-Davis-Quintetts. Trotz des gewichtigen Titels ‚Life And Death‘ schwebt diese mit Dämpfer gespielte Trompete wie durch einen schwerelosen Raum. Alles hängt wie an dünnen Silberfäden, ein Gesang, der wie aus dem Nichts kommt, steigt auf wie Weihrauch. […] Cohen ist ein großer Musiker, der mit diesem letzten Gruß mehr als nur Trauer über einen Verlust artikuliert. Sein Album ‚Into The Silence‘ durchquert komplexe Gefühlswelten.
Karl Lippegaus, Stereo
‘Into the Silence’ is an extraordinary project on every level. There is a transcendence in this music that is both uplifting and heartbreaking. The group plays as one, they genuinely feel an appreciation of humanity and life-changing ramifications of loss. The rendering of these compositions is never over-sentimental, but never less than authentic. A masterpiece.
Karl Ackermann, All About Jazz
Every modern trumpet player must come to terms with Miles Davis. Cohen speaks his own trumpet language with his own cultural inflections. But his sound, with or without a mute, brings back Davis’s mystery and melancholy in long trumpet calls like sighs of the soul. Cohen’s lines are instantly mutable because the emotions they portray are complex. Cohen the trumpet improviser alters and deepens the ideas of Cohen the composer […] Pianist Yonathan Avishai is entrusted to close the suite with a stunning, radiant, three-minute solo called ‘Life and Death-Epilogue’. It is a deep reflection on and summation of the album’s emotional journey. It acknowledges sorrow, but its passionate, slow ascent arrives at acceptance.
Thomas Conrad, Stereophile
‘Into The Silence’ is a set of reflections on the death of Cohen’s father – often solemn but never dirgey, and beautifully recorded. The pieces join classically pure trumpet soliloquies, grainier trumpet-sax exchanges that recall Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter’s 60s dialogues, a mercurial rhythm section (Eric Revis and Nasheet Waits), and piano playing of shapely minimalism from Yonathan Avishai. Cohen’s muted trumpet wreathes over Waits’s quiet brushwork and rises with Bill McHenry’s tenor sax over arrhythmic rimshots; New York adrenalin segues into resolute melancholy, and piano ostinatos bring to mind early Abdullah Ibrahim hooks. The breadth of jazz references will make this irresistible for fans, but it’s beautiful contemporary music for just about anyone.
John Fordham, The Guardian (Five Stars)
Trumpeter Avishai Cohen has steadily built his reputation through seven albums and successful collaborations as a sideman, but ‘Into The Silence’, his debut for ECM, touches a new creative plateau. A threnodic suite for his late father, the album is a somber and deeply felt reflection on the man’s life, expressed through episodic compositions that seem to wander with intention, as if the son were walking through the now-empty rooms of his father’s house, poring over objects and symbols [….] ‘Into the Silence’ is a beautiful listening experience, a fully satisfying artistic venture that more than meets the high expectations placed on it.
Tom Greenland, The New York City Jazz Record
