Anat Cohen with the Georgia State Jazz Band

Anat Cohen

Clarinetist-saxophonist Anat Cohen has won hearts and minds around the globe with her expressive virtuosity and magnetic stage presence, earning esteem both as a musician’s musician and as a performer who charms new recruits to the jazz art like few others. With her acclaimed albums, sold-out world tours and Grammy Award nominations adding up over the past two and a half decades — not to mention the glowing profiles by such totemic outlets as NPR’s Fresh Air and The New York Times — it has become apparent that the Brooklyn-based Anat has evolved into one of the music’s great border-bounding leaders, as not only an artist but as an educator, an ambassador. At the core of this, there is always her jubilant, ever-exploratory music-making, as a soloist, bandleader, collaborator and composer. Revered journalist and jazz sage Nat Hentoff encapsulated her artistry this way: “Anat does what all authentic musicians do: She tells stories from her own experiences that are so deeply felt that they are very likely to connect listeners to their own dreams, desires and longings.”

Bloom, Anat’s 21st album as a leader or co-leader and the second with her small group Quartetinho, was issued to rave reviews and a hit trans-Atlantic tour in 2024, with All About Jazz applauding the band’s “daring virtuosity and soulful joie de vivre.” Hot on the heels of that release comes a new live album: Interaction, issued by Anat’s label, Anzic Records, in March 2025. Interaction presents the clarinetist as part of The 3 Cohens, the long-running family band that also stars her brothers, trumpeter Avishai and saxophonist Yuval (both ECM artists). They were recorded in concert with Germany’s WDR Big Band, an ensemble renowned not only for its sound but also its collaborative flair. The arranger-conductor for Interaction is Anat’s Anzic comrade Oded Lev-Ari, who also plays that role with her Tentet, the 10-piece group that she has showcased at such venues as Carnegie Hall and SFJAZZ’s Miner Auditorium. Anat’s multiple Grammy nominations include one for 2019’s Triple Helix, the second album by the Tentet.

Anat has been credited as a primary force for re-establishing the clarinet as a solo instrument in the 21st century — “bringing the clarinet to the world,” as Fresh Air put it. She has been named Clarinetist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association every year since 2007, and she has also been the top clarinetist in both the readers and critics polls in DownBeat every year since 2011. Moreover, a JazzTimes review of a Quartetinho set at Seattle’s Earshot Festival underscored Anat’s continuing development as a player: “She has been winning jazz polls on clarinet for years, but her work has steadily grown stronger and deeper and freer.”

As an international presence, Anat has performed from across North and South America to Europe, Asia and India, headlining at the Newport and Umbria jazz festivals as well as at Chicago’s Symphony Center and such hallowed clubs as New York’s Village Vanguard. Reporting on a headlining show at the North Sea Jazz Festival, DownBeat said: “Cohen not only proved to be a woodwind revelation of dark tones and delicious lyricism, but also a dynamic bandleader who danced and shouted out encouragement to her group… With her dark, curly, shoulder-length hair swaying to the beat as she danced, she was a picture of joy.”

Since 2005, Anat’s prolific series of releases via Anzic have seen her range from infectious swingers to lilting balladry, from small groups to larger ensembles and back again, exploring a world of music along the way. Anat fell for the choro music of Brazil while studying at the Berklee College of Music, and the country eventually became a home away from home for her. Not only have many of her albums as a leader included Brazilian classics and original pieces that Anat composed under the influence of choro, samba, bossa nova and more; the clarinetist has also devoted multiple albums completely to Brazilian music, including the Grammy-nominated Outra Coisa: The Music of Moacir Santos (with Brazilian guitarist Marcello Gonçalves) and the Grammy-nominated Rosa Dos Ventos (with Trio Brasileiro). DownBeat declared: “One of the most acclaimed clarinetists in jazz, the Israel-born Cohen has also managed to become one of the world’s foremost practitioners of Brazilian music. Indeed, she is now to the clarinet what Stan Getz was to the tenor saxophone in the 1960s: a jazz musician who speaks the language so fluently that she has become a beacon of Brazilian music to the larger jazz world.”

A born collaborator, Anat has worked with artists from Latin jazz star Paquito D’Rivera and breakout vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant to arthouse pianist Fred Hersch and the all-star, all-woman band Artemis, among others. With her brothers in The 3 Cohens, she has toured the world and recorded five albums. DownBeat put the group on its cover, and All About Jazz asserted: “To the ranks of the Heaths of Philadelphia, the Joneses of Detroit and the Marsalises of New Orleans, fans can now add the 3 Cohens of Tel Aviv.” Also a natural educator, Anat teaches at the Stanford University Jazz Workshop in California and The New School in Manhattan, among other institutions, and she has been Jazz Artist-in-Residence at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute.

Coinciding with her solo appearance on the cover of DownBeat for the magazine’s March 2025 issue, Anat played four milestone concerts in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Appel Room, overlooking the Manhattan skyline. “Anat Cohen: Journeys — A 50th Birthday Celebration” presented her with Quartetinho and the Tentet, in Duo and a in a sextet. Capturing her broad, galvanizing appeal, the Chicago Tribune has said out about Anat: “The lyric beauty of her tone, easy fluidity of her technique and extroverted manner of her delivery make this music accessible to all.”

- Bradley Bambarger