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Renowned Israeli jazz trumpeter Avishai Cohen is set to deliver a deeply personal and emotionally resonant performance at this year’s Israel Festival, presenting music from his critically acclaimed ECM release Ashes to Gold.
The concert, scheduled for July 16, will be staged in a specially designed outdoor venue next to the Jerusalem Theatre and will feature Cohen’s long-standing quartet joined by the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.
Fresh off appearances at Europe’s premier jazz events—the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands and the Love Supreme Festival in the UK—Cohen is bringing his most ambitious project yet to a home crowd.
Composed in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks, Ashes to Gold channels collective trauma into a bold, multilayered suite blending jazz with orchestral elements.
“I had to force it out of me,” Cohen told this reporter from the Netherlands, describing his initial paralysis after the tragedy. It was pianist Yonatan Avishai, his close collaborator, who encouraged him to return to the studio. Once writing began, Cohen says, the music poured out, completed in just one week.
The resulting record—a suite-like collection of seven tracks—features raw, sometimes haunting trumpet lines evocative of sirens and sorrow, balanced by passages of beauty and hope. “It wasn’t something premeditated or intellectual,” Cohen said. “But it is my most precise in terms of execution and emotion.”
Originally performed as a fundraiser for Kibbutz Nir Oz with a string quartet from the Israel Philharmonic, the orchestral idea evolved. With arrangements by acclaimed composer Eugene Levitas, Cohen expanded the score for full orchestra, leading to this upcoming festival premiere.
In addition to compositions by Cohen, the concert will include a piece by Maurice Ravel and a striking original titled “The Seventh,” written by Cohen’s daughter Amalia when she was just sixteen. The latter, which closes the Ashes to Gold album, is expected to offer a gentle, uplifting coda to what promises to be an emotionally charged evening.
Cohen, 47, has long been a fixture on the international jazz scene, with collaborations spanning the Israel Camerata to ECM’s elite roster. As he prepares for this landmark performance, the message is clear: music, even in the darkest times, remains a vessel for truth, grief, and ultimately, resilience.