Anat Cohen

Idiomatically conversant with modern and traditional jazz, classical music, Brazilian choro, Argentinetango, and an expansive timeline of Afro-Cuban styles, Anat Cohen has established herself as one ofthe primary voices of her generation on both the tenor saxophone and clarinet since arriving in NewYork in 1999.

Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, Anat grew up with musical siblings; her older brother, Yuval, is himself asaxophonist of note, and her younger brother, Avishai, is one of New York’s busiest trumpeters. Shebegan clarinet studies at age 12 and played jazz on clarinet for the first time in her Jaffa conservatory’sDixieland band. At 16 she joined the school’s big band and learned to play the tenor saxophone. Thesame year, Anat entered the prestigious “Thelma Yelin” High School for the Arts, where she majored injazz. After graduation, she discharged her mandatory Israeli military service duty from 1993-95,playing tenor saxophone in the Israeli Air Force band.

In 1996, Anat headed to Boston to matriculate at Berklee College of Music. There she met facultymember Phil Wilson, who encouraged her to play clarinet, other inspiring teachers such as GregHopkins, Ed Tomassi, Hal Crook, George Garzone, and Bill Pierce, and an elite international peer groupof students.

“Berklee was crucial to my development as a musician” says Anat. “I was very closed-minded when I gotthere. I just wanted to play Coltrane, to play jazz; I didn’t think of world music at all. Since Berklee givesscholarships to musicians from all over the world the student body ends up being very diverse. I metmany people who played music from their own country and I came to understand when a chart says‘Latin’ on top it means almost nothing. You need to know if the music is from the northeast of Brazil,the west coast of Colombia, or someplace else on the continent. I was inspired to explore world music,starting with the music of South America, in detail”.

During her Berklee years, Anat visited New York during breaks between semesters, making a beeline forSmalls to soak up the hybrid of grooves, world music and mainstream jazz that people like JasonLindner and Omer Avital - a high school bandmate of her older brother - were then evolving. Back inBoston, she played tenor saxophone in a variety of musical contexts; Afro-Cuban music withEcuadorian bassist Alex Alvear in a group called Mango Blue, Argentinean and original music withpianist Pablo Ablanedo, and klezmer music at weddings. Called by Brazilian bassist Leonardo Cioglia forBrazilian Popular Music gigs, Anat learned selections from the songbooks of Ivan Lins, MiltonNascimento, and Toninho Horta, and studied Brazilian percussion to master the associated rhythms.The group evolved into an instrumental quartet that gigged weekly. After Cioglia left for New York, jobswith Fernando Brandao, a Brazilian flutist, provided Anat with more opportunities to play Brazilianmusic and exposed her to choro, a particularly challenging Brazilian musical genre, for the first time.

Once ensconced in New York, Anat quickly found work in various Brazilian ensembles, including a gigwith the high-octane pop band Brazooca at the Café Wha in Greenwich Village. “One night there I metPedro Ramos,” she recalls, referring to the tenor guitarist and cavaquinho player who had recentlyorganized the Choro Ensemble, “He showed up at my house the next day with songs for me to learn fora demo CD he was set to make the following week. When we started to playthe music, I fell in love withit, and it immediately rekindled my desire to play clarinet. Choro employs classical European harmonicprogressions and demands a classical approach to technique on the instrument. It offers the alegria(happiness) of the samba, nostalgia, saudade (longing), groove, and high energy. It requires constantinteraction and allows for improvisation. It has all the important elements I think great music shouldhave, and requires true dedication to learn to play it authentically. It has been the mainstay of myclarinet playing for the last seven years”.

In addition to The Choro Ensemble, Anat plays with New York Samba Jazz, a modernist quintet led byBrazilian drum master Duduka Da Fonseca, and with her brothers as “The Three Cohens”. She has longheld the lead tenor saxophone chair in Sherrie Maricle’s Diva Jazz Orchestra, the top-shelf all-womanbig band, with which she has toured the world. Since 2004, she has played the music of LouisArmstrong with David Ostwald’s “Gully Low Jazz Band”. She has explored the music of Bix Beiderbecke,Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet and their Pan-American contemporaries. Anat currently leads a youngquartet with guitarist Gilad Hekselman, bassist Eduardo Perez, and drummer Ferenc Nemeth. Herplaying and studying of a wide range of musical styles has culminated in her finding her own distinctivemusical voice.

Anat documented her bona fides on her debut CD, Place and Time, one of All About Jazz-New York’s“Best Debut Albums of 2005.” On her strikingly original 2007 releases Noir and Poetica, she referencesmany of the musical influences that have combined to create her tonal personality.

On Poetica, she plays exclusively clarinet, joined throughout by a rhythm section consisting of pianistJason Lindner, bassist Omer Avital, and drummer Daniel Freedman, and on four tunes by a stringquartet. The repertoire includes Israeli, Brazilian, and French songs, as well as John Coltrane’s “Lonnie’sLament,” two of her original compositions, and an impressionistic work by bassist Omer Avital, withwhom she shares arranging duties.

For her CD Noir, she frames sparkling inventions on tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, altosaxophone, and clarinet with an unconventionally configured ensemble - three woodwinds, threetrumpets, two trombones, three cellos, and a guitar-bass-drums-percussion rhythm section, for whichOded Lev-Ari, a high school classmate, provides fresh, originally textured arrangements. The 10-songprogram “unfolds like a Pan-American film score” says Dan Morgenstern in the liner notes.Anat approaches everything she plays with deep scholarship and a profound quality of soul. “She neverplays to the gallery; even her high notes are not for show, but part of the musical message” addsMorgenstern. “There are not many musicians on today’s scene who communicate such a genuine joy inwhat they do. She loves to make music, and while she is a physically expressive player, her moves, likeher music, are a true reflection of what she feels.”

Anat’s performance history and her two latest albums, taken together, surely confirm Nat Hentoff’sclaim that her “range of musical challenges recalls what Duke Ellington used to tell me about his refusalto limit music to any ‘category.’”