Ever charismatic, prolific, and inspired, Grammy-nominated clarinetist-saxophonist Anat Cohen has won hearts and minds the world over with her expressive virtuosity and delightful stage presence—and has been declared Clarinetist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association every year since 2007.
Cohen has also been named Jazz Artist of the Year, as well as the top clarinetist in both the readers and critics polls in DownBeat for multiple years running. Since 2005, Cohen’s series of releases via her Anzic Records label have seen the clarinetist-saxophonist range from infectious swingers to lilting balladry, from small groups to larger ensembles and back again, exploring a universe of music along the way. As The Chicago Tribune has said, “The lyric beauty of her tone, easy fluidity of her technique, and extroverted manner of her delivery make this music accessible to all.”
In 2019, the Anat Cohen Tentet reached a new crest in its evolution with its second recording, Triple Helix. The album’s centerpiece is a three-movement concerto composed for Cohen and the Tentet by her longtime collaborator Oded Lev-Ari, the Tentet’s musical director and Cohen’s producer/label partner at Anzic. Commissioned by New York’s Carnegie Hall and Chicago’s Symphony Center for live world premieres earlier in 2019, Triple Helix won raves from The Chicago Tribune as “a work of considerable expressive reach” and a “sensuous tonal palette,” with Cohen “sounding like a musician transformed.”
In March 2018, between large ensemble recordings, Cohen and the acclaimed pianist Fred Hersch released their debut duo recording Live in Healdsburg, of which Nate Chinen (WBGO) proclaimed “a beautiful document of mutual exchange, rooted in melody but alert to every possibility.”
Cohen was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, and raised in a musical family. She attended the Tel Aviv School for the Arts, the Thelma Yellin High School for the Arts, and the Jaffa Music Conservatory. Cohen began clarinet studies at age 12 and played jazz on clarinet for the first time in the Jaffa Conservatory’s Dixieland band. At 16, she joined the school’s big band and learned to play the tenor saxophone. This was the year that Cohen entered the prestigious Thelma Yellin school, where she majored in jazz. After graduation, she discharged her mandatory Israeli military service duty from 1993–95, playing tenor saxophone in the Israeli Air Force band.
In 2009, Cohen became the first Israeli to headline at the Village Vanguard, the setting for perhaps the most celebrated live recordings in jazz history; the occasion yielded the 2010 release Clarinetwork: Live at the Village Vanguard, which captured the leader paying tribute to Benny Goodman and leading a hard-swinging combo with all-stars Benny Green, Peter Washington, and Lewis Nash.
However easy Cohen makes it seem onstage, the mastery of any great art is a long, elusive challenge, and she teaches the fine points of jazz and the music of Brazil to budding students across North America, including recent residencies at Stanford, Oberlin, Michigan State University, University of California-San Diego, the Centrum Choro Workshop, and California Brazil Camp. About her experiences onstage, in the classroom, or just engaging with her listeners, Cohen says, “any day when I get to share music with people—other musicians, an audience—feels like a celebration to me.”
