Winter Poems is the ECM debut of the Israeli soprano saxophonist Yuval Cohen, leading a quartet through eight of his own compositions. He is the brother of trumpeter Avishai Cohen, a long-standing ECM artist, and of clarinettist Anat Cohen. Here he steps forward with a voice of his own, a clear, pure soprano shaped by an early classical training and set in lyrical chamber jazz.
The band is made of younger players Cohen has known for a long time: pianist Tom Oren, double bassist Alon Near and drummer Alon Benjamini. "They're three beautiful souls and talents with whom I had a great time shaping this music together," Cohen told ECM. Besides the soprano he plays melodica on one track. The album was recorded in September 2023 at Studios La Buissonne in Pernes-les-Fontaines with Gérard de Haro, mixed in April 2024 by de Haro and Manfred Eicher, and produced by Eicher.
The music draws on folk idioms and on the motivic development of classical music, and moves easily from contemplative passages to lively ones. First Meditation opens on a Levantine motif treated in close collective interplay, while The Dance of the Nightingale and the fast Avia give Oren room to stretch out. The title track began life with a fragment of Schubert's Winterreise and keeps its minor colour, built over a piano arpeggio. Song for Lo Am, which opens as a piano trio, takes its directness from Charles Lloyd. For Charlie, with Cohen on melodica, is dedicated to Charlie Chaplin. The closing Helech Ruach draws on Sasha Argov's Israeli song Hu Lo Yada Et Shma.
Nick Lea of Jazz Views wrote that the album "should put Yuval Cohen firmly on the international radar", and singled out how the quartet treats the compositions as an ensemble. In Jazz Journal Michael Tucker praised Cohen's "extraordinary plaintive sound, lyrical control of timbre and ultra-patient phrasing". Mike Gates in UK Vibe picked out the pastoral title track and the brushed ballad The Unfolding Nature of Iris, where Near takes a solo. For Sebastian Meißner in the German Sounds and Books, the record finally lets Cohen step out of his brother's shadow.
This is the CD edition, ECM 2818, first released on 14 February 2025, with a cover by Fidel Sclavo.
