http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/reviews/la-etw-cohen31-2008jul31,0,1074057.storyFrom the Los Angeles Times JAZZ REVIEW Live: Anat Cohen The gifted Israeli-born horn player makes further inroads through the boys' club wall with her performance at Hollywood and Highland. By Don Heckman Special to The Times July 31, 2008 Israel-born Anat Cohen's Southland debut at Hollywood and Highland on Tuesday night was an impressive display of the qualities that last year garnered her awards from Down Beat and the Jazz Journalists Assn. -- and it also offered hope that a female horn player, fluent on clarinet and alto, tenor and soprano saxophones, will finally eradicate the outmoded notion that the art form is strictly the provenance of male performers. While the clarinet has not been one of the prominent jazz instruments since its heyday in the Swing-era playing of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and others, in Cohen's hands -- playing material as diverse as Fats Waller's perky "Jitterbug Waltz," her own impressionistic "Washington Square Park" and a finger-busting choro by the great Brazilian composer Pixinguinha -- the instrument came alive, bursting with post-modernist improvisational transformations. Her fleet melodic articulation and driving rhythms were supported by an irresistibly charismatic presence. Clarinet held high, her long, black, curly hair a whirling halo, she easily enticed listeners into the energetic orbit of her music. Offbeat arrangements of pieces such as "Jitterbug Waltz," with its unexpected accents, added a touch of spice to the familiar. And her own lyrical "The Purple Piece" managed to produce a few minutes of entranced calm in Hollywood and Highland's usually hyperactive central plaza. Cohen has come by her versatility the hard way, working as a regular in the New York City club scene, playing for a salsa dance one night, with a choro band the next, and occasionally getting together for a family jam with her brothers -- Yuval, also a saxophonist, and trumpet player Avishai. A similar diversity surfaces on her recordings, which reveal a growing maturity as a composer and arranger, especially on the soon to be released album "Notes From the Village."

FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this review incorrectly identified Avishai Cohen as a bassist. He plays the trumpet.

Although she had played in Israeli jazz groups as a teenager and majored in jazz at the High School for the Arts, Cohen's experience with the challenges of top-level performance were relatively slim when she came to Boston in the mid-'90s to study at the Berklee College of Music, where she began to explore her imaginative approach to the clarinet. But it was Cohen's move in the late '90s to the creatively and socially diverse environment of Manhattan's West Village that opened the floodgates for her creative development. Since then, she's worked to establish a presence, dealing with what she describes as "attitude" from other musicians, club owners and booking agents who have doubts about the skills and marketability of a female horn player. Anyone who saw Cohen's Tuesday night performance, with its convincing blend of musical authenticity and magnetic appeal, can only wonder about those who would express any doubt at all. Thumbnail photo: http://www.anatcohen.com/live, courtesy Bill Westmoreland

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Anat Cohen at the Vanguard Venue/ Location:

Village Vanguard New York , NY USA

Date(s): October 22, 2008 Written By: Jeff Tamarkin Watching Anat Cohen perform is a joy matched only by listening to her. At the Village Vanguard, where Cohen and her band held forth for six nights, two sets per night, the clarinetist/saxophonist was a study in motion. Eyes closed as she blew, Cohen often danced in place, crouching, swaying and jumping, wherever the muse took her, following her own ever-shifting melody lines and tempo changes. Then, turning over the solo spot to her musicians—pianist Jason Lindner, upright bassist Joe Martin and drummer Daniel Freedman—she stood or kneeled behind a column that partially obscured her from the audience, continuing to follow the rhythms via physical expression until it was time for her to return front-and-center.

All of this was done with broad smiles—the Anat Cohen Quartet might just be the happiest band in jazz. Lindner, off to Cohen’s right, often beamed as he followed her lead, and she returned the mutual admiration; the deeper he dug in, the more she enjoyed it. But the music was never whimsical. Although the group opened this early set with Fats Waller’s “Jitterbug Waltz,” the track that closes Cohen’s new Anzic CD Notes From the Village, they established from the onset that sheer musicality is their guiding force; they just see no reason not to have a hell of a grand time playing.

Cohen, who was named 2007’s Up and Coming Musician of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association, leads like a seasoned veteran, with ample assurance and boundless imagination. Originally from Israel and now based in New York, Cohen has been extremely prolific the past couple of years, working within a number of settings and displaying a hunger for varied experiences. The quartet she brought to the Vanguard may just be the best fit of all, though. Unexpectedly unleashing a melodic upper-register torrent of clarinet during the Waller number, Cohen might have thrown other players for a loop, but these three made the transition seamlessly and built on it. Freedman, in particular, is a highly adaptable sticksman with an arsenal of ideas; his understanding of the equal value of both quietude and a good solid pounding puts him into rare company among contemporary jazz drummers. Martin was a steady anchor throughout, but he too made the most of his flights, and quite often charted the direction.

Drawing largely from the new album, Cohen and the group made clear their penchant for tossing into the blender disparate international elements and rhythmic sensibilities that should have been—but were not—at odds with one another. Cohen’s own “Washington Square Park,” which opens the album, exuded a quintessential New York vibe in its unabashedly multicultural tone, driving forward with the mad deliberation of a New York City cabbie while retaining a studied, sober, practically tender underbelly. On Ernesto Lecuona’s Cuban-originated “Siboney” (arranged for the album by Lindner) and on “Um a Zero”—penned by Pixinguinha, the pioneering Brazilian choro composer often credited with bringing the art of jazz improvisation to Brazil (“the father of samba and grandfather of bossa nova” was how Cohen explained choro itself)—Cohen’s clarinet spilled notes that in lesser hands might have piled atop one another but here flowed forward effortlessly and determinedly. The Sam Cooke civil rights-era anthem “A Change Is Gonna Come”—the appropriateness of which at this particular historical moment was noted by Cohen with glee—took the quartet into poignant blues territory while the Joe Greene ballad “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” gave Cohen (moving to the saxophone), Lindner and Martin large spaces to fill.

Cohen’s aptitude on both instruments is undeniable but her preference would seem to be for the clarinet, where she exhibits greater individuality than on saxophone. That’s just as well because saxists are as plentiful in New York City as decent pizza, while the clarinet is in sore need of an Anat Cohen to give it a booster shot of neo-coolness. She understands the instrument’s possibilities, the myriad moods she can coax from it, and the places it’s been. Given her restless artistic temperament, it’s unlikely she’ll stay with this current lineup long enough to develop what they laid down here, but for an ephemeral moment at the Village Vanguard there was reason to believe that Anat Cohen, with all of her enthusiasm and panache—abetted by the Lindner-Freedman-Martin team—is the one to take clarinet music to the someplace new it needs to go.

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May 11, 2007

MUSIC REVIEW | ANAT COHEN QUARTET

A Musical World Traveler Who Likes to Mix Things Up

By BEN RATLIFF

Anat Cohen’s quartet was playing jazz at the Jazz Standard on Wednesday night, and it was jazz that

imported elements from the Middle East and South America and the language of early-20th-century classical

music. That’s impressive, but not so surprising; those elements have all become moving parts in a jazz

composer’s vocabulary. More curiously, it was jazz that behaved like pop — determined, encased in strong

melodies and played at medium-full projection — and the musicians were articulating every note.

But one of the possible refinements for a young jazz group is to take things away, put some spaces in the

notes and phrases and test the elasticity of the band. Playing music from Ms. Cohen’s new album

“Poetica” (Anzic), her band created a sound that felt carved in stone, a little inflexible, with an almost full-

body impact.

Ms. Cohen, an Israeli musician who came to New York in 1999, has been a valuable part of the local jazz

scene ever since: playing lead tenor saxophone with the all-female Diva Jazz Orchestra, playing Louis

Armstrong’s music with David Ostwald’s Gully Low Jazz Band, playing Brazilian choro and samba with local

bands and getting into the thick of the new mainstream jazz, sometimes with her brothers Avishai, the

trumpeter, and Yuval, the pianist.

In many ways she’s an ideal: well prepared, passionately literate in music far outside her local circle, an

improviser with gusto. She understands how dance rhythms leaven and quicken jazz; her piece “La Casa del

Llano,” moving between five-beat and two-beat bounces, was tight with energy. And she has a full, even,

unsqueaking tone, especially on the clarinet, an instrument that could use another distinctive voice in jazz.

Ms. Cohen played only clarinet on Wednesday. (The night before, at the same club, she had played saxophone

with a whole other show of ambition: a 14-piece orchestra, performing music from her other new record,

“Noir.”) Between Jason Lindner’s steady vamps and inside-the-piano thumping, Omer Avital’s big, woody

bass notes and Daniel Freedman’s drum grooves, the rhythm section felt heavy, almost battering. This was

offset by the appearance of a string quartet, playing arrangements written by Mr. Avital, and in the presence

of the strings the jazz quartet reduced itself. For a version of John Coltrane’s “Lonnie’s Lament,” the string

players usefully deepened the harmony implied in the original piece; for the Israeli song “Ein Gedi” —

rendered as pastoral classical music — they were the music itself, with the rhythm section dropping out

completely.

During her solo in “Lonnie’s Lament” Ms. Cohen intimated her strength as a soloist, shifting into double time

over the ballad tempo, lengthening improvised phrases at will and leaving a few holes. Here, in her ability to

alter what was already there and shift the music’s focus to revision and reinvention, lay the promise of the

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Anat Cohen, for All the World a Jazz Innovator From Dixieland to Klezmer, Her Scope Knows No Bounds

By Matt Schudel Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 6, 2007; N03

When Anat Cohen was growing up in Tel Aviv, she traveled around the city listening to Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald on her Walkman. She began to play the clarinet at 12, then joined a Dixieland band and embarked on what has become a lifelong cross-cultural journey.

In the years since, Cohen has emerged as one of the brightest, most original young instrumentalists in jazz, playing saxophone and clarinet in no fewer than seven working bands and almost as many styles, from Brazilian music to Dixieland to modern jazz. Last month, she released two outstanding albums, each showing a different side of her musical personality.

"I don't know what is the music I enjoy most because I enjoy all of them," says Cohen, speaking from her home in New York. "I like variety. It keeps things interesting."

For six years, Cohen (whose first name is pronounced a-NOT) has played tenor saxophone with Diva, the stellar all-female big band that performed last year at the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center. This week, she brings her own quartet to the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater as the Friday night headliner at the 12th annual festival, which runs Thursday through Saturday. A week later, she'll be back in town, appearing at the Smithsonian Jazz Cafe at the National Museum of Natural History with guitarist Howard Alden.

The 32-year-old Cohen represents a growing international jazz movement that is reflected in this year's festival lineup, which features Brazilian singer Flora Purim and Japanese pianists Hiromi and Mayuko Katakura. U.S.-born performers include pianist Lynne Arriale, violinist Karen Briggs, Ann Patterson's Maiden Voyage big band and singers Stephanie Jordan and Jeannie Cheatham.

Cohen's early interest in jazz came about largely through the influence of her family. "My father lived in the United States for 10 years, and he has a great passion for the American songbook," she says. "He had a big record collection and liked to play jazz and Frank Sinatra."

When she was about 9, her older brother, Yuval, took up the saxophone "and he immediately started to play jazz and the music of Charlie Parker."

It wasn't so unusual, then, that the teenaged Anat would be playing Dixieland in Tel Aviv, followed by other enriching musical detours. At an arts high school in Tel Aviv, she intended to play classical clarinet, but it happened to be the same year the school introduced a jazz program. She picked up the tenor saxophone at 16 and chose Sonny Rollins and Dexter Gordon as her stylistic models.

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"As I grew up," she says, "I wanted to go further back and check out the fathers of the saxophone. I listened to Illinois Jacquet, Jimmy Forrest, Lester Young, Ben Webster."

She learned her lessons well. Today, Cohen plays tenor with a huge, broad-shouldered tone that you hardly hear these days from anyone, male or female. Critic Nat Hentoff, who has been chronicling jazz since the 1940s, has written, "I hear the soul of Ben Webster in her tenor playing."

Cohen spent two years in an Israeli Air Force band, then came to Boston to attend the Berklee College of Music, generally considered the leading jazz academy in the world. Yuval was already at Berklee, and a younger brother, trumpeter Avishai, came later. After Anat's Smithsonian appearance on May 18, she'll fly to Israel for a pair of reunion concerts with her brothers. The "3 Cohens," as they bill themselves, will put out their second joint album in September.

Meanwhile, Cohen and a business partner have launched a record label, Anzic, on which she has just released two remarkably accomplished recordings, "Noir" and "Poetica." On "Noir," she has assembled a crackerjack orchestra that includes eight horns, three cellos, guitar, drums and percussion. The adaptable group segues from Cuban and Brazilian music to ballads and straight-ahead jazz -- sometimes in the same tune, as when the sinuous "Samba de Orfeu" dances right into the arms of Louis Armstrong's "Struttin' With Some Barbecue" without missing a step.

Early reviews of "Noir" suggest that it will be one of the finest jazz records of the year, thanks in large part to the arrangements by Cohen's childhood friend Oded Lev-Ari, which alternate from lush Gil Evans harmonies to hard-charging bebop to a laconic beauty that could accompany a moody European film.

Cohen plays three kinds of saxophone (soprano, alto and tenor) on the album, as well as clarinet, which she had all but abandoned for several years. She has a strong, persuasive sound on each instrument -- her powerful tenor intro to "No Moon at All" practically blows down the doors -- but it is on clarinet that she brings something truly fresh and personal to jazz. You can hear it on "Noir's" opening track, "La Comparsa," by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona. It starts as semi-classical chamber piece before Cohen takes over with a deep-toned clarinet solo that is buoyant and heartbreaking all at once -- and comes unmistakably from the Jewish klezmer tradition.

"I've never dedicated myself to klezmer," she says, "but growing up in Israel, the history of the clarinet is so strong in that culture. It's naturally in my blood and just comes out."

Cohen plays clarinet exclusively on "Poetica," which includes several Israeli songs and original compositions, as well as a daringly reimagined version of saxophonist John Coltrane's "Lonnie's Lament."

"I really got a kick out of thinking, let's play it on clarinet," Cohen says. "Let's pay tribute to one of my idols without trying to imitate him."

By weaving strands of Israeli and South American music into traditional Dixieland and bebop, Cohen has expanded the vocabulary of jazz with a distinctive accent of her own. "I think it's important to stay open to different styles of music and to remember that music is music," she says.

Jazz may have begun as an African American art form in New Orleans, but it is no longer the province of any nation, race or gender. You can call it the true world music.

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Review Courtesy AllAboutJazz.com

PoeticaAnat Cohen | Anzic Records

By Jack Bowers

This is a wonderfully recorded session, overflowing with tender, charmingmelodies, and everyone involved is a world-class musician. On the otherhand, it’s not exactly jazz: more like chamber music, bordering at times onclassical and not too many steps removed from the venerable klezmertradition. There is improvisation, but it flows so easily from thearrangements that one is scarcely aware of it.

Clarinetist Anat Cohen is the leader, and this is an album she has wantedto record for some time, “to share some of what [she has] learned aboutplaying the clarinet in various musical contexts.” In this instance, theframework includes folk and popular songs from various sources, originalcompositions by Cohen (“The Purple Piece,“ “La Casa del Llano”) andbassist Omer Avital (who arranged six of the ten selections), JacquesBrel’s seductive “Chanson des Vieux Amants” and one authentic jazztheme, John Coltrane’s “Lonnie’s Lament.” These are songs, Cohenwrites, that she “has loved for years.” And it’s easy to understand why, asthey truly are lovely.

Cohen, who’s no slouch on alto or tenor sax, plays clarinet exclusivelyhere, supported for the most part by Avital, pianist Jason Lindner (asuperb accompanist) and drummer Daniel Freedman. A string quartet isadded on four selections, with percussionist Gilad (and strings) on Avital’simpressionistic “Cypresses.” “I’ve always associated the clarinet withsounds that are flowing, expressive and intimate . . . i.e, poetic,” Cohenwrites. “I made this album, and named it Poetica, to inspire others to sharethis association with me.”

Cohen, as noted, is an outstanding musician who leaves no doubt why shewas named a “rising star” on clarinet in last year’s Down Beat Magazinecritics poll. While she plays marvelously, one should keep in mind that themusic on offer isn’t, for the most part, jazz, and not expect to hear thedynamic licks of a Buddy DeFranco, Eddie Daniels, Paquito D’Rivera oreven Don Byron, even though Cohen clearly has channeled each of themfor inspiration. The album is inspiring too, and while its reason for beingis love, not money, it is nonetheless worth seeking out and savoring.

Track Listing: Agada Yapanit; HofimPurple Piece; Eyn Gedi; La Chanson dAmants; Lonnie’s Lament; Quando eChamar Saudade; La Casa del Llano;Cypresses.

Personnel: Anat Cohen: clarinet, ar7, 8); Jason Lindner: piano; Omer Avarranger (1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 10); Daniel Fdrums, percussion (6); Gilad: percusString Quartet: Antoine Silverman: vBelinda Whitney: violin; David CreswDanny Miller: cello.

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Noir Anat Cohen & The Anzic Orchestra | Anzic Records

By Jack Bowers

Frankly, I had no idea what to expect from Anat Cohen’s first big band album. But if I’d had any expectations, they’d have easily been surpassed by the time the opening track reached its midway point. Cohen plays clarinet on that selection, and it’s easy to understand why music critics have named her one of Down Beat magazine’s “rising stars” on the instrument. She’s not only an intrepid and resourceful clarinetist, but also equally impressive on tenor, alto and soprano saxes, as she proves elsewhere.

Cohen and the Anzic Orchestra are complemented by the album’s exquisite charts, written by her longtime friend, Oded Lev-Ari, who seems able to adapt any style from Brazilian to ballad, bop to pop, and make it lustrous and engaging. From the opening measures of Ernesto Lecuona’s celebratory “La Comparsa,” it’s clear that Cohen chose the right man for the task, and he never lets her down, producing splendid arrangements of Latin themes (“Comparsa,” “Carnaval de São Vicente,” Bebé,” “Ingênuo”), Hit Parade favorites by Nat Cole (“No Moon at All”), Julie London (“Cry Me a River”) and Johnny Ray (“Cry”), Johnny Griffin’s bop-centered “Do It,” a zestful medley of Luiz Bonfa’s “Samba de Orfeu” and Lil Hardin Armstrong’s “Struttin’ with Some Barbeque,” and even a little-known ballad, “You Never Told Me That You Care,” co-authored by Hobart Dotson and Sun Ra.

While the writing is exemplary, Cohen’s playing is no less so. She divides her time between clarinet (“La Comparsa,” “Carnaval,” “River,” Ingênuo”) and tenor (“Moon,” “Do It,” “You Care,” “Bebé”), moving to alto on “Cry,” soprano on “Orfeu/Barbeque,” and is superb on every one. The tenor sound is big and muscular, with traces of Sonny Rollins, Joe Lovano and even Ben Webster/Coleman Hawkins surfacing from time to time. “Cry,” we’re told, marks her recorded debut on alto, but one would never assume that from her flawless technique and placid self-assurance. On soprano, Cohen evokes a clear, handsome tone reminiscent of the fabulous Zoot Sims, best known as a tenor man but a monster on soprano as well.

Even though Cohen amasses the bulk of the solos, she’s so persuasive that one scarcely notices. There are, however, cogent statements along the way by various members of the ensemble, including saxophonists Billy Drewes, Ted Nash and Scott Robinson; trombonist Yonatan Voltzok, guitarist Guilherme Monteiro and Anat’s brothers, trumpeter Avishai and soprano saxophonist Yuval (on “Barbeque”). Also worth noting is Lev-Ari’s deft use of cellos on several numbers.

Track Listing: La Comparsa; No Moon at All; Carnaval de São Vicente; Do It; Cry Me a River; You Never Told Me That You Care; Medley: Samba de Orfeu/Struttin’ with Some Barbeque; Cry; Bebê; Ingênuo (52:12).

Personnel: Anat Cohen: leader, tenor, alto, soprano sax, clarinet; Oded Lev-Ari: arranger, conductor; Frank Greene, Tanya Darby, Avishai Cohen: trumpet, flugelhorn; Ted Nash: alto, soprano sax, flute; Yuval Cohen (7): soprano sax; Billy Drewes: tenor sax, clarinet; Scott Robinson: baritone sax, bass clarinet; Deborah Weisz, Yonatan Voltzok: trombone; Guilherme Monteiro: guitars; Barak Mori: bass; Ali Jackson (2,4-6,8), Antonio Sanchez (1,3,7,10): drums; Duduka Da Fonseca: drums (9), percussion (3,7); Zé Mauricio: percussion; Erik Friedlander, Robert Burkhart, Greg Heffernan: cello.

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