Among the more than 100 people who purchased $20 advance tickets or paid $25 at the door to hear a performance by Avishai Cohen’s Triveni at Take Five Coffee + Bar last Thursday were a couple dozen faces I’d never seen.
Most of the strangers looked as if they’d be more comfortable listening to Benny Goodman than the adventurous Israeli trumpeter. Yet not one of them left at the conclusion of the 45-minute opening set.
Cohen, bassist Tal Mashiach and drummer Nasheet Waits seduced them with the boiling frog technique.
The trio opened with a serene reading of Don Cherry’s “Art Deco.” They gradually turned up the heat with a version of John Coltrane’s “Wise One” and “One Man’s Idea,” Cohen’s tribute to Ornette Coleman. The rapt audience had been fully acclimated by the time Triveni burst into free jazz.
Mashiach, a substitute for Eric Revis, held his own. Waits, one of the world’s most enthralling drummers, made every moment matter. Cohen’s understated playing kept the music aloft.
The daring but never impenetrable second set included an interpretation of “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” and concluded with a take on the Kansas City classic “Shiny Stockings.”
(Original image by Plastic Sax.)
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