Feb 3, 2025 10:49 PM
The Essence of Emily
In the April 1982 issue of People magazine, under the heading “Lookout: A Guide To The Up and Coming,” jazz…
“I love the fact that when some people think about my music they think of it as joyous, but there is darkness inside,” Anat Cohen says. “We are complex humans.”
(Photo: R. Sutherland-Cohen)Anat Cohen, in conversation, is disarmingly present and fully invested. One gets the feeling that in most interactions she rarely leaves much unexplored, no stone unturned: a characteristic that, unsurprisingly, carries through in her music.
Words describing the clarinetist in reviews and features when she first hit the jazz scene in 2005 — “charismatic,” “gutsy,” “expressive” — still apply. What she plays is who she is, and the world has recognized and rewarded her for that.
“I love the fact that when some people think about my music they think of it as joyous, but there is darkness inside,” Cohen says. “We are complex humans. We have to be able to connect to deep inside. I can easily find that spot and I can be somber. It doesn’t happen as much, but it happens, and to be honest I’m not necessarily trying to create joyous music or make sad music. Sometimes it just goes there.”
Cohen is acutely self-aware, of herself and her music, of the present moment and the world around her. It is mid-December 2024. The holiday season is looming, and an unsettled, uncertain political reality lurks just around the corner of the calendar year.
“The challenge for me is to maintain,” Cohen says. “The maintenance of life. Maintaining one’s physical well-being, one’s mental space, because I can tell you that the world is not helping. It’s like the world just keeps trying to suck the energy out of our being. There’s so much negativity. I am asking myself, ‘What can I do to help this world or resolve these situations?’ I make music and I talk about compassion. Just do one kind thing today to make the world better. It feels like the world is doing everything it can to make us afraid, and I can’t let it. What I wish is for the world to communicate again.”
Twenty-nine years have passed since Cohen moved to the U.S. from Israel, first living in Boston and later settling in Brooklyn. (She’s adept with American idioms and jazz-scene expressions even as her Israeli accent remains strong.) It was 20 years ago when she released her debut album, Place & Time, establishing her own label Anzic Records with her longtime friend and collaborator, arranger/composer Oded Lev-Ari, all while securing a reputation as a fresh, reviving force on the clarinet. Since then, despite the presence of other deserving modern-day players of the instrument like Don Byron, Evan Christopher and Ken Peplowski, the top clarinet position in various jazz polls has remained largely hers.
Cohen is currently celebrating a mid-life milestone, one that she has come to accept graciously and gratefully. “Time flies and somehow I’m turning 50,” laughs the musician whose instrumental approach is still youthfully buoyant, and whose journey into various styles and sources continues to range far and wide. “People always asked me about my age. That would be the first question. And I was like, ‘Why does it matter? Do you ask every guy you talk to?’ I was always resenting it. But at this point I decided to embrace it and use it to wrap up this last decade I’ve been through. To say, ‘OK, this is everything I’ve done. I’ve achieved something and am ready to move on.’”
Something, for Cohen, now includes leading two groups: her Tentet and the smaller offshoot Quartetinho, both exploring her distinctive blend of traditional and modern jazz with a collection of influences including Brazilian choro, bossa nova and other South American sources. Her facility in combining these flavors, as she notes, impacts not only her set lists, but also how she handles her instrument.
“If I want to play Piazzolla and Monk and Jacob do Bandolim and Dvořák, each one requires a different production of sound. I don’t play with the same tone when I play Monk or when I play Piazzolla. I breathe differently, I hold the clarinet differently in my mouth.”
While these musical identifiers are usually the first things mentioned when Cohen is being reviewed or profiled, to her the point of her groups is as much about the material as it is about developing relationships.
“I love to play different kinds of music but making music with other people is a very intimate experience, and in order to be able to do that in a profound level, you have to build trust, and that takes time. It’s a process. And once you achieve a level of comfort, that’s no longer the goal. The goal becomes, what’s next? And who’s going to push me in that different direction?”
Bloom, the Quartetinho’s second album and Cohen’s 21st as a leader or co-leader, was released to acclaim last September, earning praise for its expansive colors, world-jazz feel, fresh compositions and creative renditions of such diverse repertoire as Thelonious Monk’s “Trinkle Tinkle” and Paraguayan guitarist Augustín Barrios Mangoré’s “La Catedral.” Despite its compact size, Cohen notes that the group’s varied, non-standard instrumentation and the musicianship of its members — pianist/accordionist Vitor Gonçalves, guitarist/bassist Tal Mashiach, vibraphonist/percussionist James Shipp — generate a richly collaborative environment, allowing her to open the music, to “explore and find different sounds and change directions completely. I’m learning to really appreciate the fact that you can take one song and say, ‘Let’s play it this way, then try it another.’”
Cohen points to “La Catedral” as an example of the Quartetinho shifting approach mid-session, in this case with the guidance of Oded Lev-Ari, who co-produced the recording.
“I had been playing it where I was trying to play every note on clarinet of this complex tune as it was written, but Oded came in and suggested I let go of some of the notes to open it up, and it changed the concept for me,” says Cohen. “I said, ‘Wait a second, I can let it go.’ The melody will be there — we have a guitar player, a vibraphone, accordion and a piano — I don’t need to play all the melody. It was a beautiful suggestion and it worked nicely. That’s what ended up being on the album.”
Cohen’s close relationship with Lev-Ari dates back to their high school years in Israel. They might as well be family, and in fact, that sense of connection, in Cohen’s case, propelled her from the start. When she arrived on the New York scene she was welcomed both as a solo artist and as a member of the 3 Cohens, the on-again, off-again group that includes her older brother, saxophonist Yuval, and younger brother, trumpeter Avishai. The three siblings had grown up together, learning their instruments and jamming with each other, and eventually attending the same conservatory; Lev-Ari, who was closest in age to Anat, attended as well.
Modern jazz has had its share of noted siblings: New Orleans’ Marsalis family, the Jones brothers in Michigan (Hank, Thad and Elvin) and the Eubanks family of Philadelphia (Kevin, Robin and Duane) all come to mind. But the Cohens stand out, remaining a close-knit unit, performing and recording together when the situation is right.
“Our parents could have made us a nice rhythm section, but they stopped, so we had to learn to play with just the three of us, how to change the role from being a soloist to accompanist and how to have a constant conversation,” Cohen notes. She laughs, and adds: “And now we have to pay other musicians to be the rhythm section.”
Cohen reports that in the usual pecking order of siblings, Yuval’s musical instincts served as an early model for the other two: “He would go for an idea because it’s the right thing to do and be very creative with it in a nonconformist way, being clear and developing his ideas with conviction. Avishai and I have discussed how influenced we are by Yuval.”
As the youngest, Avishai “was never full of words” growing up, recalls his big sister. “Now he’s very connected to all the words and all the notes. Avishai is an observer, and a hunter — staring at something, knowing how to get straight into the heart of the music. His intensions to me are always so clear. You listen to his music and you can hear his heart.”
Cohen also takes pride in the fact that her brothers have become labelmates. “Now the two of them are both on ECM. Avishai’s latest [Ashes To Gold] came out near the end of last year, and Yuval’s brand new album [Winter Poems] is coming on Feb. 14, so the 3 Cohens are in action.”
As solo artists, yes, and once again, as a family collective. It’s been a more than 10 years since Tightrope, the last recording by the 3 Cohens, arrived to critical praise. They have a new album, Interaction, that is being released on Cohen’s Anzic label in March. It bristles with the siblings’ characteristic energy, even as it helps mark the respective growth of each of them, even as they return to the familiar, familial overlap. They’ve grown, of course, but they’re not alone. “The world is not the same as it was before COVID,” Cohen notes, with a pause. “It’s a different world now, and who knows about the year that’s coming.” As it turns out, the impact of the pandemic had a role in bringing together the Cohens with the WDR Big Band.
A bit of background, bitte: The WDR Big Band, so-named since 1980, is one Europe’s premier jazz orchestras, the contemporary continuation of dance bands funded and maintained since the early ’60s by Germany’s regional radio service, Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne. Like the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, it benefits from having a performance home and consistent membership. They perform under their own name and with others, are well-versed in standard jazz repertoire and learn new music for special events and recording projects — and often create collaborative situations themselves. (Bob Mintzer recently served as a guest conductor and Vince Mendoza as composer-in-residence.)
The WDR Big Band had originally booked the 3 Cohens for a June 2020 concert but the COVID lockdown forced them to put everything on hold. Almost exactly two years later, WDR was pushing to return to a robust program and rescheduled the event.
“The idea at the start was to make a concert with the 3 Cohens, arranged and conducted by Oded Lev-Ari,” says Cohen. “They have broadcast ability, of course, and a room in which we could rehearse and record, and they were filming and it sounds fantastic.”
So, the original intention was not to put out a record?
“No,” she says. “WDR invited us to create and perform a show and recorded it. It was our choice when we heard how good the recording was. Now it’s great to finally have another 3 Cohens album.”
Interaction features seven of the nine tracks performed that evening in Cologne. “We had to cut a couple of songs to fit on the album,” says Cohen, adding that they also opted to stick with the concert recording rather than the studio performances because of the energy and crowd response. The album sequence was chosen primarily by Lev-Ari. As opposed to many live recordings that cherry-pick from a string of concerts, Interaction stands out as a single-night performance: same band, same audience, same energy that builds track by track. Cohen gives Lev-Ari the lion’s share of credit for both production and pre-production.
“Oded really worked the hardest on this album,” she says. “He wrote all the arrangements. He got us to choose repertoire, and we each brought an original and some songs from our own recordings, plus a couple of Oded’s originals. By the time we arrived he had the machine rolling. I remember it was a really positive experience, and they were playing their asses off.”
In a move not often seen in the jazz world, WDR booked rehearsals to begin a full two weeks before the concert, flying in Lev-Ari to work with the big band on arrangements and develop other ideas. Even so, when the Cohens arrived, there was work to be done.
“The arrangement might be X amount of minutes, but not everything is written,” Cohen says. “So it took a few hours for the big band to realize, ‘OK, this is not just the normal soloist-blowing-some-chord-changes and we play the song.’ It took a little more sensitivity, asking them to listen inside the music and be flexible with the interaction. The band did a fantastic job, and so did Oded and, of course, my brothers — they’re bad asses.”
Yuval, Anat and Avishai, consulting with Lev-Ari, chose a setlist of diverse flavors, varying in intensity and energy. Some tunes showcase one of the soloists, while others — like “Shufla de Shufla” — threw a spotlight on all three.
“Shufla de Shufla” (Aramaic for “best of the best”) is a flagwaver in shuffle time — which also inspired the title — opening with each Cohen having their say, Avishai pushing forward most boldly, evoking “Haitian Fight Song” at one point. Then a sashaying solo from WDR’s pianist Billy Test, and then an extended section highlighting Lev-Ari’s arrangement and a modern twist on a traditional jazz feel, the siblings rotating in and out, bouncing off each other’s ideas.
“Shufla de Shufla” was followed by performances defining a diversity of emotion and mood. The bright, jumpy “Catch Of The Day (for A&M),” dedicated to Anat and Marcello Gonçalves, highlights Yuval Cohen’s soprano saxophone work at the outset, followed by a fiery trumpet moment and WDR’s Ben Fitzpatrick on tenor. The more somber vibe of tracks like “Naked Truth” and “Trills & Thrills” offer Avishai a chance to add a darker side to the mix, with electronics on the latter.
“Footsteps & Smiles” kicks off with handclaps and launches into a punchy, good-time arrangement that brings to mind the R&B-inspired feel of early-’70s big bands. “Festive Minor” is a Gerry Mulligan tune, done a capella, spiced with another “Haitian Fight Song” reference.
“‘Festive Minor’ is a song that is a key in our evolution as the 3 Cohens,” says Cohen, joking that as teenagers they had little choice in how to musically progress at home, and pointing to an album that provided them with ideas and material. “Part of our family tradition is this three-voice conversation we do. We were influenced by this cassette we had called What Is There To Say — Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Art Farmer, a piano-less quartet. It has “Festive Minor” on it, and “My Funny Valentine” and “As Catch Can,” which I recorded on my first album, Place And Time. We grew up listening so much to this album.
(Lev-Ari’s liner notes for Interaction offer his own recollection of an early encounter with the threesome performing in tandem with a music-minus-one recording in Cohen’s apartment, and going for it. “One would start a musical phrase, and another would imitate or complete it — or even foreshadow its conclusion, to the frustration of the originator, as if to say, ‘I know what you’re going to do,’ or ‘Corny! Find something else.’”)
“Tiger Rag,” the 1917 scene-starter by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, was covered by the Cohens on their 2011 Family album. Their rendition with WDR steers close to the clarinetist’s richly modern treatment and serves as both a reminder of Anat’s penchant for traditional jazz and as a star turn on the album. “The first jazz we all played together was as part of a Dixieland band in Israel …” She catches herself, mindful of linguistic shifts.
“I know people don’t use the term ‘Dixieland’ anymore, but that is what we called it then. I grew up playing the music of New Orleans in our family. That was the first jazz we all played. It’s a fun arrangement I did for this song, and then Oded rearranged my arrangement for the big band.”
The boisterous audience response as each track ends — particularly on “Tiger Rag” — is an important element of Interaction and points to an evening charged by a thrilled, heightened reaction. It’s palpable enough to feel that it might have had something to do with the year-and-a-half lockdown preceding the concert. “They definitely get more and more excited as the music went on,” remembers Cohen. “Then, oh, my god, I just remember how many beers we drank after. It was an amazing night.”
The WDR concert, as Cohen recalls, was but one stop on a momentous European run that post-COVID summer.
“Cologne and then Frankfurt were an incredible week, and then we did a few more shows, just the three of us without a big band with Yonathan Avishai on piano,” she says. “To spend that time together, away from the wives and the children, just us, being together and being on stage like when we were growing up and playing music, that was special.”
The takeaway from that experience?
“I come from this place, and I’m used to this place, and I look for this place when I play with other musicians. But I don’t always find this place because you don’t have that natural connection with every musician you meet. So, I look for what I have with my brothers and that makes it much more challenging.”
Cohen pauses, and returns to taking stock and counting blessings. “I have a career. I have my own record label. I’ve gotten some recognition from colleagues, from the industry, from my family.” She mentions the gratitude she feels of being in New York, and “I can still just randomly walk into a jazz club and be like, here are all my friends, all my colleagues, and I’m part of a community.”
She mentions an upcoming run at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Appel Room that serves as a midcareer celebration, in which she’ll perform in a variety of contexts: solo, duets with her brother Avishai and with seven-string guitarist Marcello Gonçalves, Quartetinho and her Tentet. But Cohen resists any temptation to get carried away by the numbers.
“So, there’s the 20 years for Anzic Records, there’s 50 years for me and Oded’s also turning 50 — I’m older than him by a month,” she says. “He’s the baby. And my mother just turned 80. On one hand, it’s just dates; none of it matters. One another, they give us a reason to stop for a second and reflect, which we don’t really get to do in the middle of the process.
“But I’m not done. I feel like there’s a whole side of me that hasn’t been explored yet. I don’t know exactly what it is, I don’t even know if it’ll be with the clarinet. I just want to be good with the unknown and to go for it. And I don’t want to be afraid.” DB
“She said, ‘A lot of people are going to try and stop you,’” Sheryl Bailey recalls of the advice she received from jazz guitarist Emily Remler (1957–’90). “‘They’re going to say you slept with somebody, you’re a dyke, you’re this and that and the other. Don’t listen to them, and just keep playing.’”
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