Would It Be Wrong To Ask for More From One of the Most Exuberantly Entertaining Jazz Pianists of His Generation, Emmet Cohen?

Emmet Cohen‘Vibe Provider’Mack Avenue JazzAppearing at Birdland Through December 7Livestreaming at Emmet’s PlaceEmmet Cohen is a 21st century jazz pianist who would have been better served by the business model used 60 to 70 years ago. In the 1950s and ’60s, the major musicians — especially the superstar pianists like Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner, and George Shearing — easily made two or three albums a year, which is exactly what Mr. Cohen should be doing.Mr. Cohen, who is playing this week at Birdland with his trio including bassist Phillip Norris and drummer Kyle Poole, began recording for Mack Avenue in 2021 and since then has released one album a year; last year he gave us the latest in his Masters Legacy Series, a team up with a venerated veteran tenor saxophonist, Houston Person. This is actually a lot for an artist these days — most major jazz musicians give us a new album only every two or three years — but still it hardly seems like enough.His new release, “Vibe Provider,” co-produced by Messrs. Cohen and Poole, is up to his usual very high standard. The album alternates between his trio — in a few cases with Joe Farnsworth playing drums — and an expanded ensemble featuring three horns: trumpeter Bruce Harris, trombonist Frank Lacy, and tenor saxophonist Tivon Pennicott. The horns feature in three originals by the leader. Two of Mr. Cohen’s originals, both of which the trio performed at Birdland, are dedicatory works: The title was inspired by the late Funmi Ononaiye, a producer and staff member at Jazz at Lincoln Center who was a constant presence for many years at Dizzy’s. “Vibe Provider” was his nickname, and Mr. Cohen honors him with a piece that switches moods several times; it both swings and has semi-classical interludes, and also alludes to an Afro-Latin vibe. The album opens with “Lion Song,” inspired by a Harlem stride master, Willie “the Lion” Smith, and his composition “Echoes of Spring.” It rather sounds like that classic work being stretched and squashed through a series of funhouse mirrors; you might call it “Reflections of Echoes of Spring.” Coincidentally, the late Lion was always keen to remind listeners of his identity as an African American Jew, while Mr. Cohen asserts his own spirituality with a profoundly swinging treatment of the traditional Hebrew song “Henei Ma Tov.”As good as “Vibe Provider” is, one wishes Mr. Cohen would also release a steady stream of live albums, preferably from Birdland. He opened the first of a 10-set run with a whimsical, boppish reinterpretation of “The Dance of The Sugar Plum Fairies” from “The Nutcracker Suite.” He followed with a rollicking rendition of “This Guy’s in Love with You” that translated Burt Bacharach and Hal David into pure swing, throwing a few bars of Joe Zawinal’s “Birdland” into the coda as if to make a point. Then he essayed “Tin Tin Deo,” which deserves to be played as much as Dizzy Gillespie’s other, more famous pieces. To stress the Dizzy-ness of it all, he worked in snatches of the melodies to “Salt Peanuts” and “Birks’ Works.” Perhaps for Mr. Cohen, a perfect yearly schedule of releases would be one studio album, possibly with a larger ensemble; one live album with his matchless trio; and one more new album in the legacy master series — for starters there are those two 96-year-old living legends of jazz vocals, Sheila Jordan and Marilyn Maye. So that’s three albums he should do each and every year. Now surely that’s not too much to ask of one of the most exuberantly entertaining jazz pianists of his generation, is it?

Would It Be Wrong To Ask for More From One of the Most Exuberantly Entertaining Jazz Pianists of His Generation, Emmet Cohen?

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