Avishai Cohen (Bassist)

Avishai Cohen was born in 1970 at Kibbutz Kabri in northern Israel and grew up in the moshav of Sho'eva near Jerusalem.[1][2] His family background is notably multicultural: his mother, Ora, was an artist of Sephardic descent whose ancestors had immigrated to Palestine from Greece and Turkey, while his father, Gershon, came from an Ashkenazi family.[3] Cohen learned religious songs from his maternal grandfather and has described his musical inheritance as shaped by Spanish and Arabic music.[3]

Cohen began piano lessons at about age ten and developed an early habit of marking the family piano keys with shells to remember melodies he created.[3] At 14, his family relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, where he took up the electric bass and learned the instrument in less than a year.[3] He was drawn to the instrument after hearing Jaco Pastorius with Weather Report, and he also encountered the work of Stanley Clarke, Ray Brown, and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen during this period.[3]

The family returned to Israel in 1986, and Cohen enrolled at the Music and Arts Academy in Jerusalem.[3] A workshop led by Steve Horenstein introduced him to Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and John Coltrane—recordings he described as having "such truth in them."[3] As a teenager he performed several nights a week, primarily in Tel Aviv. He later served in Israeli Army bands, where he came to understand the bassist's role as the rhythmic and harmonic foundation of an ensemble and developed his interest in the double bass.[3][1]

After completing his military service, Cohen pursued the upright bass with near-total dedication, studying with Michael Klinghoffer before moving to New York in 1992.[3] He enrolled at The New School of Music and also studied at Mannes College of Music. His formal education was accompanied by practical experience in New York, where he supported himself with daytime work, practiced at night, and performed with other young musicians.[3][1]

At The New School he met pianist Brad Mehldau and percussionist Adam Cruz, briefly performing in a trio with them.[3] Cohen also became acquainted with Jorge Rossi, who introduced him to Latin and Cuban music.[1] Through Rossi he met Panamanian pianist Danilo Pérez, joined Pérez's group, and contributed to the album Panamonk, which brought him wider notice in jazz circles.[1] By 1995 he had begun presenting his own music at New York's Smalls club.[1] Early New York collaborations also included work with tenorist Grant Stewart and guitarist Peter Bernstein.[3]

Cohen's international breakthrough came in 1997, when a demo recording of his original music reached pianist Chick Corea. Accounts differ on the route: one reports that Cohen gave the tape to Corea's manager at an International Association of Jazz Educators conference, while another says it passed through an acquaintance. Both describe Corea responding by offering Cohen work as a bassist and an opportunity to record for his Stretch label.[3][1] Corea later described Cohen's music as "fresh and swinging and original and so well played."[4]

Corea coproduced Cohen's debut solo album, Adama, released in 1998. The album combined Middle Eastern sounds with Spanish, Latin American, and traditional American jazz influences and received enthusiastic reviews.[3] Cohen subsequently joined Corea's acoustic sextet Origin and performed with the group through the end of 2003.[5] By the late 1990s he was also receiving recognition through his work with Corea's New Trio.[3] In a 1999 DownBeat poll, he was named the most promising bass player among younger musicians.[5]

Following Adama, Cohen released Devotion in 1999, praised for combining diverse musical forms with his instrumental technique.[3] His 2000 album Colors incorporated Middle Eastern phrases, reggae, funk, Latin beats, and fusion elements; Bass Player magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential Bass Players of the 20th Century around this period.[3]

In 2000 Cohen formed the International Vamp Band, a sextet of young musicians drawn from Israel, Mexico, Argentina, and Cuba.[3] The group made its concert debut in February 2001 at the Jazz Gallery in New York and was featured on Cohen's fourth album, Unity, released on Stretch/Concord in 2001.[3] Unity was conceived as a message of worldwide peace, and Cohen said he wanted to express his feelings about civil unrest in Israel without appearing to exploit a situation of deep personal significance.[3]

By 2003 Cohen had established his own label, Razdaz Records, as he pursued an independent recording career.[1] His 2005 release At Home, described as his sixth solo album, contained 11 original compositions.[1][5] A subsequent album, Sensitive Hours, marked his first substantial foray into singing and produced songs such as "Sensitive Hours" and "Shalom Aleichem." It unexpectedly became a widely played and enduring record that helped bridge modern jazz with Hebrew songwriting and mainstream radio.[6][7] The 2010 album Aurora was released internationally by Blue Note and included the track "Winter Song."[7]

Cohen's album Arvoles took its name from a Ladino song learned from his mother and reworked for the project.[6] He also composed music for the French film C'est la vie, which drew on substantial portions of his existing catalog.[6] By 2019 his career encompassed 16 albums.[6] In 2021 he released Two Roses, pairing his jazz trio with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra of Sweden—another expression of his sustained interest in combining jazz with orchestral and classical forms.[8] His 2024 album Brightlight was presented with a new quintet featuring pianist Itai Shamhubitz, trombonist Yonatan Volchok, saxophonist Yuval Darbin, and drummer Eviatar Salibnik.[9]

Cohen's musical language fuses contemporary jazz with classical music, Israeli repertoire, Ladino, and Mediterranean traditions.[9][8] He has described jazz's attraction for him as rooted in its freedom, openness, improvisation, and breadth of creative possibilities.[1]

His mixed Sephardic and Ashkenazi heritage remains an audible presence throughout his work. Even in instrumental settings, Hebrew songs, piyutim, poets' songs, and Ladino references surface alongside Mediterranean and Latin rhythms and African-American jazz vocabulary.[2][6] His orchestral projects have further linked contemporary jazz with Hebrew and Ladino repertoire and classical forms.[8]

Cohen has consistently emphasized his Israeli identity within an international career, stating that he has never concealed it, sings in Hebrew, and brings Israeli content into his music even while being associated internationally with New York.[2] He has also been noted for identifying and mentoring younger musicians, as reflected in the shifting membership of his ensembles over the years.[9]

Beyond his work with Chick Corea, Cohen has collaborated with a wide range of major jazz and popular musicians, including Herbie Hancock, Bobby McFerrin, Roy Hargrove, and Alicia Keys.[5] He has performed with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Boston Pops.[5]

To mark his 50th birthday in 2020, Cohen launched the 50:50:50 concert series, planned across 50 cities worldwide, with the Israeli concert scheduled with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at Tel Aviv's Culture Hall.[2] In 2025 the French government awarded him the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters for his contribution to global and French culture.[9]

The name Avishai Cohen, also transliterated as Avishay Cohen, refers to at least two prominent Israeli jazz musicians, and the two are frequently confused.[6] The bassist covered in this article was born in 1970 at Kibbutz Kabri.[1] A separate Avishai Cohen, a trumpeter, was born in Tel Aviv in 1978, began playing trumpet at age eight, performed with the Israel Philharmonic's youth orchestra, studied at Berklee College of Music, and later became a cofounder and artistic director of the Jerusalem Jazz Festival.[10]

The trumpeter's albums include The Trumpet Player (2003), Into the Silence, Cross My Palm With Silver—named by The New York Times as one of the best jazz albums of its year—and Big Vicious (2020).[10] After the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, the trumpeter initially stopped playing and writing music before composing much of the Ashes to Gold suite in a single week in November 2023 amid rocket fire and sirens; its title references the Japanese kintsugi practice.[11][12] The suite was scheduled for performance with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra at the 2025 Israel Festival.[12] The two musicians share Israeli origins, overlapping international careers, and some common collaborators, making careful source attribution essential.