When my friend Antonio Campeglia asked me to review a record of my choice, I immediately accepted with great enthusiasm, but then deciding where to start and which particular piece to focus on (as per request) was very difficult. In fact, the same enthusiasm that led me to immediately accept the proposal, made me find after a short time between miles of old and new records and of which I would have immediately wanted to talk to you. For each CD or Vinyl I would have liked to tell you something important to me as well as for each song, but then doing an act of force to be concrete and satisfy the request, I decided to tell you about the latest Avishai Cohen CD-DVD.
Avishai Cohen in my opinion represents, together with Brian Bromberg, Stanley Clarke and a few others, one of the best double bass-bassists-composers currently in circulation. Of Isdraelian origin and New York training, over the years he has been the author of numerous pieces contained in various CDs up to the box set in question.
In the package we find a CD audio and a DVD videos that contain the performances and differ for some tracks present alternatively only in one of the two formats.
Here, in listening and in vision, passages follow one another such as:
Smash: electric fucion style with acoustic piano, synth, electric bass (fender jazz bass of 75), drums and sax
Elli: acoustic and melodic with good free parts, great contemporary jazz.
Etude: acoustic with a South American flavor with a horn section that enriches some phrases. Sustained rhythm.
Bass Suits: basically a solo double bass.
Feediop: acoustic with very pleasant fucion rhythms
Samuel : acoustic where lyricism and rhythm are passionately intertwined
One for Mark: acoustic with a beautiful basic "repetitive" rhythm, on which the piece develops with various openings
Nu Nu : acoustic, great feeling, the dialogue between the instruments is never excessive everything takes place with extreme harmony and energy, alternating choral moments with solos.
Remembering: written by a double bass player but in which the acoustic piano and the double bass are intertwined in a very high lyricism, where warmth and delicacy excel and everything flows away without particular excesses and in the right doses.
Caravan: closing piece is a tribute that the author dedicates to Duke Ellington.
Those of you who have come to read so far will surely have realized that I liked the CD-DVD very much. All songs are of excellent workmanship and with a large emotional participation of the group. It almost seems that the watchword is feeling. The pieces performed with the double bass for me are qualitatively a notch higher.
Obviously, if you want to carry out a microscope analysis, it is easy to highlight how, being a live recording, this is greatly affected by the interpretative moment of the artists. In fact, very high moments alternate with moments in which everything, while flowing flawlessly, lacks big emotions. Another need of the live is that, sometimes, to give more space than necessary to the suns.
I wanted to point out the most interesting songs for me so I built a first emotional list, realizing at the end that I had reported almost all of them… I really think that I liked the work. At this point, therefore, the advice I can give you is to start listening to Remembering and then abandon yourself to the music.
As for the technical considerations, to be a live, shooting and recording are very good with the instruments that differ sharply, with the right dynamics and clear locations.
As Is…. was recorded live on August 31 – September 1, 2006 at The Blue Note in New York.
The training is completed by:
Sam Barsh - Acoustic Piano-Keyboards;
Mark Guilliana-Battery;
Diego Urcola -Trumpet;
Jimmy Greene- Sax.
Good listening
