Yonathan Avishai - Shapes and Sounds (2024) [Hi-Res]

Five years after the release of his album “Joys and Solitudes” on ECM, pianist Yonathan Avishai is back on jazz&people, the label that discovered him. Celebrating a decade of fertile collaboration with his trio, with Yoni Zelnik on double bass and Donald Kontomanou on drums, the musician releases “Shapes and Sounds” an album in which he magnifies everything that has made the strength of his style and its reputation: a way of playing with the forms and sounds of jazz, focusing on building from elements reduced to their quintessence (pure swing, the texture of a cymbal, the sound of a double bass, a few piano notes, a touch of blues…) moments of pure music. Inherited from Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk and Ahmad Jamal, his sensitive and spare touch gives rise to a series of eight pieces, six original compositions, which range from pure and sweet moments of happiness to the expression of more painful tensions, as well as two covers: “When You're Smiling”, made famous by Louis Armstrong, which will bring a smile to all those who hear it; and “La Mélancolie”, a magnificent song by the great French songwriter and performer Léo Ferré, which the pianist turns into a sad and romantic ballad that will speak to everyone through its simplicity. A favorite of musicians such as trumpeter Avishai Cohen or bassist Omer Avital, Yonathan Avishai reminds us with “Shapes and Sounds” that he is one of the most singular and touching pianists on the current jazz scene. Too good to be missed!

Yonathan Avishai, piano
Yoni Zelnik, double bass
Donald Kontomanou, drums