Avishai Cohen's Anchor in the Open
Cohen's bass lines ground Pérez's piano in infectious grooves and unexpected harmonic turns.
Avishai Cohen is the spine of this record. Paired with Danilo Pérez's restless piano and the dual-drum attack of Tain Watts and Terri Lyne Carrington, Cohen provides the one steady force—not rigid, but present, walking and anchoring while everything else spirals outward. This is what makes PanaMonk work. Pérez's compositions pull from Panama, Monk, and fusion impulses, and without Cohen holding the low end with clarity and pulse, the whole thing could scatter. Instead, Cohen locks in, pushes back gently, plays space as much as notes.
The double-drums setup could have been chaotic—two people keeping time, competing for the pocket. But Watts and Carrington work almost like one organism with two heartbeats, and Cohen bridges them, connects the rhythm section to Pérez's upper-register wandering. On tracks where the piano gets abstract or fragmented, you feel Cohen's bass making sense of it, not explaining it away, just refusing to let the music lose ground.
This is a pianist's album formally—Pérez wrote it, leads it, dominates the sound—but Cohen's work is what prevents it from becoming just virtuosity. He keeps it grounded in swing and groove even when Pérez is doing something stranger. That's a specific kind of musicianship: knowing when to push, when to hold, when to let the bandleader fly. The album is better because of it.
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