"One Day I Got a Call That Chris Cornell Is Looking for Someone"

In 2012 Israeli musician Avi Mashiah witnessed Chris Cornell on stage for the first
time. Since then, like millions of people around the world, Cornell’s music became a significant part of Avi’s life. In 2016 Cornell played an acoustic show in Tel Aviv with musician Bryan Gibson. With the help of Cornell’s staff, Avi and Cornell started communicating and two months after his last stop in Israel, Avi traveled with his 11-year-old son to meet Cornell on his birthday.

It was backstage in the city of Spokane, Washington, where they met and celebrated life and music. It was Cornell’s last birthday celebration. On March 2017, Avi traveled to New York for medical training in one of the city’s biggest hospitals. He contacted Gibson, who toured with Cornell in his last years, and asked him if he would be willing to produce one of his songs while he was in the US. Little that they knew, Avi would land in New York two days after Cornell’s suicide. He called Bryan and the two were shaking and shocked. Avi asked if they should cancel their plans, but Bryan said “Let’s meet and do something nice for him.”

It was then and there that “The Orphans at the Door of the Church” were born. A project celebrating life with Avi’s songs, with Gibson as producer and cello player, with more and more songs set to release in 2019. It was Cornell’s music that brought this project to life and unexpectedly connected these two people, as it has for millions around the world.

“Avi and I initially met under the tragic circumstances of Chris' death, which was a shock for us both,'' says Gibson in an exclusive interview, “At the beginning, this loss filled our minds and hearts, and it became a heavy influence on everything. I think that as a fan, Avi had strong feelings regarding Chris' death, that were very similar to mine - I was also a fan of his, and I was very fortunate to work with him for a few years, and got to know him on an intimate musical level. Processing those feelings was a big motivating factor.”

Recently, the two have started working on more songs in Gibson’s studio, expanding the project with releases that can last for years to come. “Avi is very passionate about his work,'' says Gibson, “He brings in new songs when he comes to a session, and it's always exciting to have such passionate ideas being thrown around. The process is our inspiration.”
  
I had a feeling that something happened musically with and after the passing of Chris, where you helped bring the cello to the forefront of rock production, up to a point when we can now hear it quite often in more and more popular rock music, which wasn't the case in the years prior to that. Was it an intentional effort from your side? 

“I’ve been involved in many projects over the years where there has been somewhat of a calculated effort to bring cello to the forefront, and I guess you can say that was always on my mind. My first instrument was the guitar, which I learned to play by listening to rock records in the late 80's and 90’s. I initially learned by listening to players like Slash, Mike McCready, & Kim Thayil, so I grew up in a landscape where the guitar was an important figure. In high school I played lead guitar in several bands. Then when I got into cello I studied it classically, I went to college, and that was what I majored in. So I came from this approach of learning music by ear, from a very organic method, to studying the academic, classical perspective of it, and so I really got to know the great depth of what a cello could do. When I started playing in different bands through college, I played a bunch of different instruments, almost like a painter who used different sets of colors for different paintings. I like to think of instruments that way, as if they were different color palettes that you can choose from…certain instruments are better than others at conveying certain emotions.”

“With Chris it just happened organically,'' says the talented musician about the work with Cornell, “We rehearsed for about 2 weeks before the Higher Truth tour, we met in LA, got in a room together, and started playing all his stuff. He was open to anything. He never suggested that I play anything different than what I did. From a musicians perspective, it is a very exciting thing to be in a project like that, because there are infinite possibilities. In other times you’re working with another producer or an artist who has a very distinct vision of what they want it to be, and I think that for whatever reason, Chris preferred the open-ended approach for this tour.”

“I didn't start out playing a lot of solos. There were a handful of songs… ‘Fell on Black Days’ is a good example. That was the song that brought Chris and I together. I got a call one day from a friend of mine who was managing Chris at the time. He mentioned that Chris was looking for someone who could play several different instruments, and contribute something unique to what he was doing. They sent me a bunch of recordings from a live acoustic show he played at the Troubadour in LA, and I took that live recording of ‘Fell on Black Days,’ and wrote a cello part for that song. He really enjoyed it and invited me to come to LA for some rehearsals, and that led to the tour as well. That particular cello part never changed, I played it the same every night on tour.”

I would assume most artists with a career as long and as successful as Cornell’s, would be very precise about the outcome they are searching for in their music. They seem to be surrounded by a group of consultants that advise what would be the right thing for this year or for that project. It sounds like you went through a very different process.

“That's right. I really did not know what to expect before we started rehearsing, but it was very much the opposite of what you just described. During our first rehearsal, we played ‘Like Suicide’ which is one of my favorite Soundgarden songs, and suddenly he stopped playing and was just quiet for a moment as I continued playing. I wasn't sure what was going on, and then eventually stopped and asked him if something was wrong, and he said no, that he was listening to what I was playing and it was just so good that he lost his place.”

“He wasn’t a classically trained musician, and I think he was kind of baffled that I managed to follow the ebb and flow of his tempo and intonation. He asked me how that was possible. If he sang a note that was a little bit flat or sharp and I was playing a harmony, I would follow him, and that is something that classically trained string players do inherently, and he wasn't accustomed to that."