Fred Hersch +. Avishai Cohen (replaces Enrico Rava) + Bram De Looze

CHANGE OF PROGRAMME:

Because of the ongoing Covid pandemic - in combination with his high age - Enrico Rava has decided to cancel all his commitments abroad. In consultation with Fred Hersch, we have found a more than worthy replacement in the Israeli trumpeter Avishai Cohen!

Hersch has qualified Cohen as the trumpeter he had “the most natural connection” with and a tremendous flow. In the light of Hersch’s career, and his many duos with trumpeters, that’s quite a compliment!

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Two grandmasters on our stage. We have a patent on this at the Leuven Jazz Festival.

Think of the musical fusion between bassist Ron Carter and accordionist Richard Galleano. Or also as a piano duo the improvised marriage between Craig Taborn and Vijay Iyer. Or the heroic evening with Fred Hersch and his Italian counterpart Stefano Bollani.

FRED HERSCH

This time, Fred Hersch likes to be accompanied by the trumpeter Avishai Cohen. Pianist Bram De Looze also joins this festive concert. De Looze is still young, but no less virtuoso for that. He has surpassed the mark of 'promising' for a long time.

With his 18 nominations for the Grammy Awards, Fred Hersch is a pianist who knows how to conquer many hearts. He does not allow himself to be led by genres. His music is not inspired by names from the past either, but he is influential with pianists like Brad Mehldau and Ethan Iverson, two of his former students.

In the pandemic year of 2020, Hersch released the fantastic album 'Songs from Home'. He played every day a song from his new record for an online audience. ‘Songs from Home' not only contains standards by Cole Porter, Joni Mitchell and Duke Ellington, but also his own work. And that did not go unnoticed: the French jazz magazine 'Jazz Magazine' named Hersch as ‘Foreign Artist of the Year’.

The year 2022 also looks good, because we are looking forward to new work by his trio, recorded at the famous Carnegie Hall in New York.

AVISHAI COHEN

Avishai Cohen is recognized globally as a musician with an individual sound and a questing spirit, an ever-creative player-composer open to multiple strains of jazz and active as a leader, co-leader and sideman.

Aside from the acclaimed work with his quartet over the last several years, and previously his trio work under the moniker Triveni, Cohen has also recorded and toured the world as part of the Mark Turner Quartet, the SFJAZZ Collective, Jazz100 (with Danilo Perez, Chris Potter, etc.), Zakir Hussain, and the 3Cohens sextet – with his sister, clarinettist-saxophonist Anat, and brother, saxophonist Yuval. Named as the Artistic Director of the International Jerusalem Festival, Cohen has also been voted a Rising Star on three consecutive occasions in the DownBeat Critics Poll.

His collaboration with Fred Hersch goes back to his earliest days in New York, often with The Cohens but also in club settings and more informal sessions. Hersh appears for instance as a guest pianist with the family trio on ‘The Tightrope’ (Anzic Records, 2013). In 2021, they finally had a small European tour as a duo, with sold-out performances in Madrid en Seville.

BRAM DE LOOZE

Bram De Looze - still only 30 years old! - has been making the European and New York stages unsafe for a decade now with projects like LABtrio (with Lander Gyselinck of STUFF. and Anneleen Boehme), Pentadox (with Samuel Ber) and a trio with Joey Baron and Robin Verheyen. In 2016 he won the 'Sabam Jazz Award for young talent' at 'Gent Jazz' and in 2018 he received the 'Klara Award' for his album 'Switch the stream'.

De Looze chooses to work with piano builder Chris Maene on a long-term basis. He made recordings with several exceptional instruments from Maene's collection. After 'Piano é Forte' ('Leuven Jazz 2017') on replicas of historical pianoforte's, the album 'Switch the stream' followed in 2018, played on Chris Maene's revolutionary straight strung or right-strung grand piano. He also brightened up 'The Sound of Piano' at 30CC last autumn with arrangements of J.S. Bach. Now he can join the two grandmasters. Picked by Fred Hersch himself to work both solo and in duo.

Press

PRESS ON AVISHAI COHEN

• “Every generation of jazz trumpeters revisits the legacy of Miles Davis in their own ways, but the Israeli rising star Avishai Cohen’s version of the journey has been particularly skillful.” (The Guardian)
• “an extravagantly skilled trumpeter, relaxed and soulful … deftly combining sensitivity and flair.” (The New York Times)
• “Avishai Cohen has rather quietly become one of the most creative trumpet players in jazz.” (JazzTimes)
• “Cohen is a versatile, modern master.” (DownBeat)

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