Saturday, July 26 6:30 PM
“What’s not to love about a young clarinetist and saxophonist who plays everything we love–modern jazz, world music, ‘hot’ New Orleans-style jazz–and does it all brilliantly?”
— The Wall Street Journal
Ever charismatic, prolific and inspired, clarinetist-saxophonist Anat Cohen has won hearts and minds the world over with her expressive virtuosity and delightful stage presence. The New York Times reviewer, Nat Hentoff, once wrote of her: “She made it look effortless, even as she was playing the most technically difficult of all the reed instruments… she took my breath away.”
Born in Tel Aviv, Israel into a musical family, Anat began clarinet studies at age 12.
After graduating from high school she discharged her mandatory military service playing tenor saxophone in the Israeli Airforce Band. In 1996 she enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston and hopped down to New York City regularly where she connected with world music and future collaborators. After graduating and moving to NYC in 1999, she toured for a decade with the all-female Diva Jazz Orchestra and worked with groups as disparate as Duduka Da Fonseca’s Samba Jazz Quintet playing Brazilian choro music and David Ostwald’s Louis Armstrong-inspired Gully Low Jazz Band. She quickly caught the attention and respect of jazz sages like Hentoff, Ira Gitler, and Dan Morgenstern, and her career flourished.
Many honors have been bestowed on her work over the years. Anat is the perennial winner of awards from JazzTimes and Down Beat Magazines and the Jazz Journalists Association. In 2009 she also won the ASCAP Wall of Fame Prize. This year not only was she again selected as the top-ranking clarinetist in the Downbeat Readers Poll, but she won with an astonishing 4,184 votes, the highest number of votes cast for ANY artist in ANY category.
Since 2005 she has recorded numerous albums on her Anzic label to popular and critical acclaim. In 2017 her passion for Brazilian music was displayed in two simultaneously released recordings, Outra Coisa: The Music of Moacir Santos and Rosa Dos Ventos, both of which received GRAMMY nods. Her 2019 recording, Triple Helix with her Tentet, also GRAMMY-nominated, was commissioned by both Carnegie Hall and the Chicago Symphony Center for live premieres.
Anat recorded four acclaimed albums with her brothers, saxophonist Yuval and trumpeter Avishai, and special guests as the 3 Cohen’s Sextet. She has collaborated regularly with Cuban-American clarinetist-saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera and played all the major European festivals with ARTEMIS, the all-female band led by pianist Renne Rosnes. In the same timeframe, she was selected as director of the Newport Jazz Festival’s Now 60! Anniversary Band with whom she toured the US. She also toured with pianist Fred Hersch, the iconic Cuban singer, Omara Portuondo and others.
Still, Cohen finds time in her busy musical life to teach in residencies across North America. These include Stanford, Oberlin, Michigan State, and the Centrum Choro Workshop where she teaches the fine points of jazz and the music of Brazil to budding students.
Anat calls her latest musical configuration, Anat Cohen Quartetinho. Pronounced “quartet-CHIN-yo”, the band name is Portuguese for “little quartet.” Each member is an ace on multiple instruments: Anat on various clarinets, Tal Mashiach on bass and guitar, Vitor Gonçalves on piano and accordion, and James Shipp on vibraphone and percussion.
The members go back, as each is also part of Cohen’s Tentet. “There’s just four of us,” says Anat, “but the band’s sound feels bigger, richer than that. We can jump from a tango to a Brazilian song to swinging on a Monk tune to playing a Cuban 6/8. We can go to a lot of places with the repertoire, which is really satisfying—and fun.”
And fun is what will be had by all at the 30th Anniversary Litchfield Jazz Festival when this exciting group wraps up the Saturday, July 26th shows!
Litchfield Jazz wishes to thank Adena Siegel for her generous support of the Anat Cohen Quartetinho performance.