Basses high with Avishai Cohen Trio and Nikki Yeoh’s Café Oran at Barbican

One of the words that perhaps best defines the Avishai Cohen Trio is fluidity. Cohen himself embodies it, straight out of the blocks with some expansive bass soloing on the first tune, not an inch of the neck left uncovered. The trio glide easily through different shades of emotion during the performance, from the nostalgia-tinged, thoughtful heads of tracks like ‘Eleven Wives’ and ‘Dreaming’ to more hard-grooving, jagged pieces like ‘One For Mark’.

There’s new, unheard-before music on offer too, much of it primed to show off the synchronicity Cohen shares with pianist Elchin Shirinov, as they deftly harmonise on melody lines. Young drummer Roni Kaspi is a revelation, an often-effortless player with a graceful control of the kit. When her turn for an extended solo comes, the excitement in the Barbican Hall is palpable as she ratchets up to a frenzy, garnering some of the night’s most rapturous applause. Following a voraciously demanded encore, the crowd finally left satisfied, the band repaid their applause with a good extra half hour of high-level improvised music.

Opening the night was another trio: Nikki Yeoh’s Café Oran. A tribute to Algerian pianist Maurice El Médioni, the set was a seamless mix of blues, jazz and North African music, tinged with arabesque flourishes and delivered by Yeoh with panache. Demi Garcia Sabat pattered away on drums and percussion with intent – often playing with just his hands – while cellist Shirley Smart offered some impressively varied and lithe soloing. The set closed with a slightly out-of-the-blue cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘Hurricane’ - the cello suddenly sounding like a fiddle, Yeoh channelling her best Dylan drawl.

It’s unorthodox stuff to say the least, and this last throw of the dice perhaps doesn’t quite hit the mark. But it’s all part of the fun of the festival, where the unexpected and the ad-hoc can so often yield moments of magic.