Israel Festival opens Thursday with jazz piece written after Oct. 7
Trumpeter Avishai Cohen’s quartet to perform with Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra at event postponed due to Iran war
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleJessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
On Thursday night, under open skies outside the Jerusalem theater, trumpeter Avishai Cohen and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra will kick off the long-awaited Israel Festival.
The special joint performance will mark the premiere of one of Cohen’s latest original works, “Ashes to Gold,” from his quartet album of the same name. The piece was written in late 2023, as Cohen struggled with the aftermath of the Hamas-led terror attack on October 7.
It will now be performed at an arts festival that was set to begin on July 3 but was postponed due to Israel’s war with Iran.
The Tel Aviv trumpeter spent many years in the US and kept touring widely after moving back to Israel. He had planned a month of composing in Israel around October 2023, and anticipated performing the music as it emerged.
But when the Hamas attack happened, Cohen wrote in the album notes, he stopped playing music.
“I could not write anything,” wrote Cohen. “I couldn’t touch the trumpet.”
That November, he told his pianist, Yonathan Avishai, that they would have to cancel the tour and their recording. But Avishai pushed back and insisted they keep playing and writing.
Cohen ended up writing much of the “Ashes to Gold” suite in one week that month.
“By this point [we were] in the full craziness of wartime,” he wrote. “With rockets flying over my head, alarms and sirens going off, and so on. Did all of this affect the music? How could it not?”
Music reviewers have commented that one can almost feel Cohen pushing back against the war that raged around him. That is particularly apparent in the final piece, “The Seventh,” which refers to October 7 and was written by Cohen’s daughter, Amalia.
The title of the suite, “Ashes to Gold,” comes from the Japanese art of ceramic repair work known as kintsugi, “where you take the old and the broken and try and put the pieces back together to make something golden and from the fragments,” wrote Cohen.
Cohen’s quartet includes pianist Avishai, Barak Mori on double bass and Ziv Ravitz on drums.
Thursday, July 16, 9 p.m., tickets available online at the Israel Festival site.
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