Obnoxious Listeners - Avishai Cohen from Dan Cutright on Vimeo.

Thanks for giving me credit for helping you guys put this together, but truly, it’s fans like you who deserve the thanks, for being such dedicated bloggers, for taking the time to write about music simply because you like it, and for being as professional as you were in putting together the interview and actually posting something so quickly.
     - Carey from GoMediaPR (Avishai’s PR rep)

What better way to celebrate our 100th post than with a video interview of Jazz artist/composer Avishai Cohen! It’s been three months since I first heard Gently Disturbed (2008) by The Avishai Cohen Trio. Not only have I purchased two more of Avishai’s albums, but I had the pleasure of seeing him live at his first of 8 performances at the Blue Note in NYC this past labor day weekend. To top it off, Nirav managed to secure some time to meet him between his sound check and performance.

Literally within three hours of my Avishai Cohen Trio post going live, we received an email from Avishai’s PR rep showing her appreciation for our post. This was the first anything like that happened to us at Obnoxious Listeners. It feels really good to get that sort of feedback. Well, we managed to keep in touch here and there. Since Nirav and I were planning to go see Avishai the Thursday before Labor Day, he figured why not try to set up an interview? I don’t know how Nirav does it, but I’ll just leave this sort of thing up to him from now on (we’ve got some more really great interviews coming in the near future thanks to him!). The interview went really smoothly and led into possibly one of the best times I’ve had in NYC. I’ll leave the details of the interview to the video itself. The show afterwards, however, was absolutely amazing. Seeing this trio live is a completely different experience than isolating yourself and cranking the album. Nirav and I listened to his albums enough to recognize his songs, but I think he and I were just as blown away as our two friends who hadn’t heard his music at all before. I think David’s man-crush on Avishai extends a little beyond mine, but I’ll let him tell you about that if you know him.

In any case, the studio recordings I have are much more structured than the show which maintains just enough structure to keep the song intact. And just when you felt like all hell had broken loose, they eloquently slap an incredible resolve right across your face. You didn’t even see it coming and it’s over before you know what happened. I wish we had the chance to see at least one more of his shows because I’m sure each one is very different. Lucky for me, Avishai is making his way over to Boston by the end of this month. I guess I’ll find out then.

I really just want to thank Avishai for taking the time to sit down and have a conversation with us, and his PR rep Cary making it possible. I’m pretty sure Avishai really wanted a nap since he had just flown in from Israel maybe 48 hrs before our interview, but he seemed happy to have a conversation despite his jet lag. It was great meeting him and I hope you enjoy the interview as much as we did.

Related Posts: Avishai Cohen Trio

Avishai Cohen Music | MySpace | Wikipedia