Avishai Cohen Talks Practice

Jazz trumpeter Avishai Cohen first came to my attention when Chad McCullough spoke with me about practice several months ago. I promptly checked him out and was psyched to discover a new favorite jazz trumpet player. He’s one of the most interesting players I’ve heard in a while; definitely check out his albums Triveni and After the Big Rain especially the track Parto Forte  (also check out The Trumpet Player). And while I’m at it, check out this vid of Avishai playing Well, You Needn’t:

Avishai was in Chicago playing with his long-time friend, NY singer-songwriter Keren Ann (here’s a clip of them at a Tel Aviv show–Avishai plays and sings). Avishai agreed to hang out and chat about his take on practice. We went for sushi before the show, and I was so caught up in the hang that I neglected to turn on the recording for a while. Before I did, Avishai talked about the gig he’d done the night before at the Playboy Jazz Fest to a huge crowd, and we marveled at the weirdness of ass implants, the mastery of Eddie Palmieri, and a lot of other interesting stuff.

The quality of the recording isnt’ the greatest, and you might hear some sushi-related Japanese spoken in the background. Hope you enjoy.

Want to learn more about the best ways to practice? Get an e-mail with a discount code when The Practice of Practice is published (June, 2014). To learn more about the book, check out a sample from The Practice of Practice.

As always, links to interesting/useful stuff we talked about can be found below.

• The Four Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferris
• Laurie Frink, trumpeter, master teacher
• Clinical Notes on Trumpet Playing, by Roger Ingram
  • check out the NPR interview w/ Roger Ingram talking about being a sideman.
• Greg Gisbert (here’s a solo from him on Wind Machine with the Buddy Rich big band, solo starts @ 1:40)
  • check out Round and Round on Greg’s MySpace page. Wooo!
  • and GG’s recordings on Criss Cross Records
• Downbeat interview with Herbie Hancock
  • Downbeat’s The Great Jazz Interviews
• Christian McBride (music)
• Ornette Coleman (music)
• Avishai is on tour in Europe with the group Tea for Three (with Dave Douglas and Enrico Rava)