In&OutJazz: Thank you Tal for being with us today. We would like to start from where your career is currently. The art of duo, with John Daversa. Is this your latest record?

Tal Cohen: Thank you so much for having me! At this point yeah. We just recorded another live album and that’ll be coming out soon. But yeah, that’s the most recent one, volume one.

Is this your second album as a band leader?

I suppose it is….no,  I had my first one I recorded in Australia in 2011 called Yellow sticker and then I did another duo album with a great vocalist called Danielle Wertz, and then I have another one with this saxophone player from Australia, and that’s another thing, but then I have Gentle giants which is the one with Greg Osby and then it’s this one yeah. So, there’s been a few but I would say that as of recent yeah, this one is the project that I would say I feel like very much a leader, a co-leader, me and John together, you know?

Why a duo?

During Covid we couldn’t have that many people in the same room, so John was like “you want to come and play?”. We started playing and we just kind of found this magic between us. And before you know it, it would go into a project and John was like “we should record” and suddenly we started getting gigs and suddenly the party kind of lifted.

Did you release this record under any record label?

This one was a self-release. We decided to do it under John’s company, which is a small company. I mean, it’s just him.

What about your other record “The Gentle giants”?

Gentle Giants is on Inner Circle, which is Greg Osby’s label.

What is your criteria for choosing a record label? What do you think is important?

That’s a really good point. I feel these days about record labels, it’s kind of... what are they actually going to give to us? I mean, what advantage do we get? Is there a distribution deal or anything like that, you know? This felt like we could just do it on our own and kind of cook it on our own because it was only the two of us, the budget was smaller also. And we recorded it at University of Miami and all that. So, this one felt like we could do more… on the other hand I will say that for the next record, we’re definitely shopping for a record label. What I think would be good for us is maybe ECM. I think that label would be good for the music, but that’s not an easy to get, you know.

The thing about this album is that we’re really trying to break away from the normal duo like thing. So usually when you think about a duo you might think it’s ballads and kind of slow you know. But this is like super high energy…, John plays three different instruments, he sings a little bit too, it’s a really diverse project and I feel like that’s why the audience is connecting with it, you know?

That’s very exciting! I’m looking forward to hearing it. Can you tell us about your experience as a Grammy winner.

It was with John, the Big band album. The first one he did was with The Beatles, it was like reimagining The Beatles, and then it got nominated for three Grammys, but it didn’t win, but he got nominated. And then later he did a project called American dreamers and it was to highlight what was going on, from what I understand, to highlight kind of what’s going on with the political situation where the people that were born in the states now had to deal with some political struggles to stay in the United States because their parents are not American, you know? You don’t have to write this because it’s kind of political, so I’ll leave that up to you, but it was called American dreamers. And it’s an amazing project, he wrote so much music for it, and he brought some of those people to play on the album. He flew them from around the country. Some of them were musicians, they could play really well. Some of them were musicians that maybe weren’t like amazing, but we found something for them to contribute. Some of them were great musicians. We had one alto player by name Santiago that I think was from Mexico and he was born here in the United States but now he was having to go back to Mexico and he was a great clarinet player and he played on the whole recording, he was fantastic. So yeah and he actually went to the Grammys and I actually was there participating and it was a great event. So I played on the whole album and I was featured on it, I was featured on the album and I was in the house band, I was the piano player for the album and then the album won three Grammys, best solo, best composition and then also won best band.

Best band, that’s the one you feel like it deserves to you, it’s like “oh I’m part of this”. Congratulations for that!

We are also interested in knowing your experience playing with people like Joe Lovano, Terence Blanchard, Greg Osby. Especially Greg Osby it’s been considered someone that has an eye for extremely creative people, everyone that he lets around him or he chooses to play his records are highly creative. How do you feel about having become one of the “Greg Osby guys”?

Yeah, I mean look I moved to the States 10 years ago or something like that, and I played with Greg Osby in Australia. I moved to Australia when I was very young. I spent 14 in Israel and then, when I was 15, I moved to Australia. Joe Lovano passed by Australia to do a tour and I got called for the gig and I played with Joe Lovano and then I played with Robert Hurst the great bass player and I even played with Ari Hoenig when they came and I was getting a lot of experience in Australia playing with some American players. When I moved to the states, Greg contacted me and he said “hey Tal, I want you to be in my band”.

I was very excited about it obviously. And then I called him to do Gentle giants after I won the money from the Freedman Fellowship which was a big competition in Australia. I played in the Sydney Opera House actually, and yeah it was amazing, sold out. It was amazing I played at the Sydney Opera House and I won a large sum of money at the time as the first place winner and that’s how I did that album Gentle giants and I invited Greg to play and Robert Hurst and I flew my friend from Australia Jamie Oehlers and we had a great, great thing. And then Greg called me and said “hey Tal, I want you to be in my band” We started touring a little bit with the quartet and we played a few venues in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York…, we started doing some things and then he said “let’s record the album”.

That was a great opportunity for you, no?

It was amazing and I remember, before we recorded the album, Greg sent me all the music like two days before and it was so hard, and I didn’t sleep for two days, just learning the music. Oh my…., I’m from a small town in Australia, Perth WA, where… Troy Roberts and Linda Oh are from there too. Linda is playing with Pat Metheny now. We’re all from the small town in Australia called Perth. And there’s just a really good school there that’s producing some really good musicians. And I moved here to Miami and Greg was like “hey can you do that”. Then we did a big tour in Europe, just me and Greg playing duo actually in Ukraine before the war, in Poland and we played in Ireland…, and since then I’ve just been kind of playing with Greg whenever the band gets called. I mean, the band and the record came out amazing. I love the record, I love how it came out. But just quickly I don’t want to talk too much, but going back to what Greg is…, Greg is so unique there’s no one like him he’s his own thing. From two notes you know it’s Greg Osby. And he’s so unique and he doesn’t say a lot, but there’s a lot going on in his brain, you know?

He’s also unique in choosing people…

He sees your soul…

Exactly that’s why everyone that plays with him is actually very unique also.

You’re 100% right. He has an eye for creativity, and he doesn’t want you to sound the same. Like, some of the songs there’s no chords on them, it’s all like just two notes that he chose and like improvised on this and it makes you play different things, you know?

He’s like putting you outside of your comfort zone.

When you’re playing this stuff, you feel really uncomfortable you’re like “what is happening? I feel so bad” but then you listen back to it and you’re like “ah! that was really cool”

Can you elaborate more on that?

It really feels like you don’t know what you’re doing but then you listen back to it and it sounds great! All your other senses are very active, because you can’t rely on everything that you know. All your musical sentences are at full capacity, well they’re all to the maximum because you don’t know what’s going on so you’re like in a dark forest or something so you’re super alert and you’re starting to see things you couldn’t see before “oh I need to go that way”.

That’s a super cool way to describe it. What are your strengths as a composer and interpreter?

Really good question. I feel like as a sideman, as an interpreter of other people’s music maybe, I feel like I’m pretty good at finding a way to play the music but also sounding like myself. I never struggled with that, I feel like when you listen to, say Greg Osby’s album, the new one Minimalism, you hear Tal Cohen playing what Greg Osby wrote but you also hear how I break away from it and become myself.

Right, you can adapt but also be yourself, a combination of you and whatever is going on around you.

Yeah, it’s a fine line between just being yourself and not playing the music at all, “I don’t like this I’m just gonna play”. I’m good at playing what’s written and making it sound myself, I feel like that’s a strength of mine. As a composer I feel that you can always hear some kind of melody, there’s always a sense of romanticism in my compositions even if they’re crazy there’s always a sense of some kind of melody there. Maybe it has to do with where I grew up and all that I don’t know. But there’s always a sense of some kind of melody. There’s always something that’s related… I’m not this guy that’s like…, I mean I love the tradition that’s really what I listen to, but I’m not this guy that’s like “we gotta keep the tradition alive”, you know? Like this jazz guys “it’s all about the 1950s we can’t let go!” That’s not me at all and it’s not Greg at all. But I feel like there’s always something there that’s melodic and connected to the tradition, I would say…

That makes sense. Can you tell us about your experience working with Inner Circle?

Of course, yeah, specifically with the record label…, the record label itself, first of all Greg has such a good reputation…, like if you’re on Greg Osby’s label that means that you’re saying something. So the record label is very prestige and very selective. So, the reputation of the record label is very high and if you’re on that record label you might not be famous, but you have like something to say and Greg believes in you and that stamp of approval just by itself has a lot to do, that’s already amazing. I did learn a lot I would say. The idea of the record label is that it’s a self-sufficient record label and that you can ask for the contacts and do what you want from there.

It is good to have that freedom, right?

Yeah, exactly. But it’s not like a thing that you gotta pay or anything. It’s like you’re on the record label, you can use all Greg Osby’s contacts and you can try and do what you can. And he’ll, all the support industry features on the website it’s really cool and all that. But it’s an amazing experience, it’s really cool to be on it, but the real experience for me was really to be on the album. The label is amazing and all that, the idea of the label is really cool but it’s really about the playing. I think the level is amazing, I hope that my next record will probably be on there. The one with John Daversa is kind of more on John’s kind of…but the next one will probably be on Inner Circle.

How would you describe your musical evolution? How is it happening in the technical level, style, projection? Are you moving in a specific direction?

Yeah, good point again, really good. So I live in Miami right now. I go to New York a lot to play, I’ve got a gig at Mezzrow, and I’m playing with the Mingus Big Band also… but right now I’m going to play with one of my favorite musicians in the world, Ignacio Berroa.

I suppose to answer your question in terms of evolution, I’m in Miami now and I had the privilege of playing with the most amazing Cuban musicians that ever walked the planet. Armando Gola, Ignacio Berroa, Ludwig Alfonso…etc. All these amazing drummers, percussionists, Felipe Lamoglia, amazing saxophone…, so those guys have really had a lot…, they also shaped my music… Of course, I’m not a Cuban piano player. I can do it but I’ll never be as like a Cuban piano player. But I just learned a lot of the style and it comes into my music and the openness and the rhythm that I play with and all that, it’s very different and really cool, so that has a lot to do with my evolution. Besides that, I feel like that I’m getting better at doing bigger gigs like with John Daversa…, and we played like big concert halls with, when you think about where I come from it’s a small town in Australia, it’s humbling and it’s beautiful, but also to find the confidence to say “I’m here and I’m going to play, and here I am”, you know? And I remember when I first moved to Miami I was practicing in the practice room and I got a call from Terence Blanchard and he said “hey Tal can you do a gig?” because he saw me playing and he said “can you do a gig?”. And I remember going on that gig and being so nervous. He’s one of the biggest names and I’d just moved to America and here I was like getting on a plane and the guys came pick me up and I was like “oh my god” … Saying “what happened?”, yeah, surreal. And then I go to the gig and you know it was Justin Faulkner playing drums and this great band and I was like “lower your heart rate”. I was so nervous and you know I just came to America and I thought “what’s happening”, you know?

Are you more confident about yourself now?

Exactly. I go to Mezzrow and I play with Ari Hoenig, and I’m just going to do my thing, and when I go and play with Greg I’ll do my thing…, a lot has happened many tours, many big gigs…, played with John Daversa, played with Ignacio Berroa. And now I go and play festivals and I do what I do and I feel like I wish I could have that now (perform with Terence Blanchard) because I’ll just enjoy it more. I won’t be so nervous, like “I gotta get through this without having a heart attack”. So I wish I could do that. So in terms of my evolution, I feel like I’ve found a way of playing like myself and matching myself to more things and being more in the moment and less stressed and it’s something that not enough musicians talk about because we’re always like “yeah man evolution is I got another gig and I got another thing and you know I’m gonna do another album”, but what about your personal evolution as a human being?

Usually people are “well my evolution is we’re going to do another album and that time I’m going to have Herbie Hancock on it, and next year I’m going to do another album and it’s gonna be with Chick Corea” and all go “oh, wow, great, yeah”. But what about the personal thing? I’ve grown as a human being and I feel more confident myself and my style to actually take on any gig and sound like myself. And you know what? Maybe if I get hired for a gig the person that hired me would be like “ah that’s not really my thing”, but I will still be confident about what I did because I played like myself and I did my best.

So now I feel like I’m more ready for more things, I’m more relaxed. Greg sent me the music for the album two days before. I was like “okay Tal well you’re gonna have to do this”. It was so hard. I listened to it, and I listened to it and I was playing it and I was like “oh my god I gotta do this”, I was calm, I didn’t sleep a lot and I went and I played like myself. And that’s really, that’s something that I’ve learned here in the States from doing so many different projects, different gigs, different things that you have to adapt and still be yourself and be able to function and not get too stressed or lose your head. So that’s also my evolution.

But it's the most interesting, I mean if we don't…

It's the way it works for me so yeah, if it works, it's fine. Then if in 10 years I will get bored of it or I will see it's not working anymore I will change it. But for the moment it was really a moment of pure joy for me to stay in my room and just try “oh this sounds cool”. And most of the times what happens is that many things sound cool and then after five minutes they are boring so then you have to understand which ones of the 10 really cool stuff you found. Then you just take one because the other nine are just fancy for five minutes and then…

So there's a cool process going there, it's cool. I tell you I'd rather have music that comes from pure joy and that is somehow naive but it's always truthful, than a sober academic music which sounds great and it's well produced but doesn't have that truthfulness to it you know. So this is personal opinion but I think this music, the music that you make touches people's hearts more often than the other one so…, you should know that from our part at least.

I got you, thank you!

¡ Cool, so, we're getting to the end. I'll give you three more questions they're brief. First one it's a little curiosity. How was playing with Enrico Rava? How was it?

I would just say to you, because now one year and a half has passed from that experience and I would say I can't wait to do it again.

Nice!

Because it was the first experience of that kind that I was having and I wasn't prepared at all for that so now I'm prepared because I did it just already once, and I have to say that it's an experience that made me grow so much in terms of music, but also in terms of person who plays music, in a more 360…

Yeah, yeah, great!

He is amazing he is pure joy again, since we used this term before, and it's amazing how…, I mean everyone who knows him, young musicians I think would love to become his age and having this joy in playing and in playing with young people, so he's really an enthusiast, and joyful and yeah and this was amazing because he was looking at me and he was smiling and he was happy about playing with me. And of course I at the same moment I was happy but   also frightened because for me it was like “oh my god I'm playing with Enrico” so that's why I'm telling you I would like to do it again cause I would come to it more ready.

Yeah, so cool. I guess this musical and personal and human encounters in life are the very the very best, the most interesting. They make you grow as a human being and that also includes musically, right? So, it’s so cool what would you just told, so cool…

And it's also funny that most of the experiences in life, I think to everyone, come in a moment in which you are not actually ready for that but the day after you are ready, it’s crazy.

Yeah, it's cool, how there is a smooth evolution in ourselves that keeps us always somehow frightened to what's coming but then also proud of what we just did and, I don't know, it's cool…, humans after all, it's awesome. Okay last question, a little bit bigger. So what would you say or how would you describe your evolution in your music career also considering where you’re focusing right now, like at the moment, and the projects you’re having right now. Like, how is your evolution and how is it that you are right now in the point where you're and tell us where you are at. Tell us what projects you have and where are you focusing right now and yeah…   

So, I've always…, so I started practicing improvisation and we can say I switched from the classical academical path 11 years ago, so I was 20, now I'm 31. And in these 11 years um of course I did some, I did a master's degree in a conservatoire, I did a lot of things, but you know, everything was kind of coming in the path, I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do but I was just welcoming what came from the sides and these sides led me to where I am which, at the end, sounds to me quite linear…, curvy but linear. And it's amazing because I'm really happy of the path that I did, even if it was really, not by chance but I was leaving things to come in a very natural way and I was…, these years I have been always playing and I have, it's some…, maybe it's a detail but I think it's important: I've always   earned money enough to make my own living without I mean aside from my apartment.  And this now means playing in the festivals in the clubs and beautiful places, but for most of these 11 years meant playing at wedding parties and country parties so I really played a lot of kind of music different genres in different very different situations and I'm really happy about that because this gave me really a panoramic view of what music is, and also I'm really happy that my studies, even if they were a bit random I mean I was studying jazz fusion “oh I love Allan Holdsworth, I want to play like him”, and then “oh wow Steve Reich wow so…” and then “oh my god…” so it's all like that. My life is yeah, I get passionate of what I cannot do or what I don't know and I really jump into it and yeah in a sort of like a childish way but yeah and then I'm trying to convey all these in what I do, so again, it's really spontaneous and maybe some a bit naïve, but it's fine. And I'm happy that   the projects I'm working on are satisfying me in a personal and artistic way. This trio is the main focus of the moment of course so I'm trying to make it play as much as possible and we would like yeah…, I've been playing a lot in in Italy in these last years and I would like to start playing somewhere in Europe at least.

We would be delighted.

Yeah and then what's more? I have many other projects, I've just recorded an album with um classical double bass player and a countertenor. It's a project dedicated to Frank Zappa.   Yeah it's really a crazy project. Then I have another really nice project with a viola da gamba player and we play Bach’s two voices inventions and then from that we go to other   contemporary music repertoires. I still have my solo project which I would like to renovate somehow I mean I would like to have another solo project the one i had till now was really based on the minotaur, the Greek ancient myth of the minotaur and, because I like having inputs from the literature, from the ancient Greek myth and now I would like to work on some other issues but we'll see. Because in the middle what I also do is just playing the violin as a normal violinist for other people like a side musician so at the moment I’m in Florence because I’m involved in a theater production right. We have a tour of 72 shows in all Italy, the one of today would be the 19^th, so we still have more than 50 to come. So yeah and it's fine because I don't have any teaching activity which is fine, but at the same time you know experimental music is not the easiest way of touring and having concerts, so I'm working also in the theater and I've been working with a pop artist for a lot of time and I've been playing in stadiums with him so it's all experience and it’s fine.

Yeah definitely, I mean it's so cool to know that you're up to as many things as you can and even more so it's cool to feel your energy and also how you approach things in that humble way that is also perceived in your music you know. I think the human that produces his or her music in that production in that in that same music he or she is producing, that's like a testimony you know that's definitely a cool contribution after all. So we were before asking you what contribution…, I guess throughout the whole interview we got a nice view of how you contribute to the world in general. So it was so cool to listen to you and to get to know you better.

Thank you thank you very much.

We're really happy of having had you and I don't know we'll keep up with you if we can and we'll have to to see what you're up to and to see if we can meet you again at some point   whenever in Europe or we're trying to go…, or in Spain, of course!

And also I have to tell you something which is important I tell you now because it's otherwise it would be it would be a problem, you know the name of the trio we played with in Münster, is was Terre Ballerine, you know Bega, of course because you were there. So actually, there was a change in the name. I won't explain you the reasons because it's a long story and anyway, with my press agents we were thinking that maybe an international name was maybe easier to pronounce and had a better impact so after a long brainstorming we found out that the new name of this trio, is just the name that changes, everything remains the same but the name is Relevé which is you know the classical ballet movement…

Yeah, ok, beautiful choice, good to know. Thank you so much Anaïs, we are in touch. It’s been a pleasure.

been a pleasure for me too, thank you. See you soon!

See you soon, good afternoon!!!