EyeShotJazz | Jazz Photography

Last night at Cornish Earshot Jazz Festival presented once again Anat Cohen.  Conversant with modern and traditional jazz, classical music, Brazilian choro, and Argentine tango, the Israeli clarinetist has established herself as a leading voice in jazz moving forward. And with it, she “reaches a state of musical ecstasy…as her clarinet moans, sighs, soars and wails with passion and emotion,” wrote All About Jazz.

Nat Hentoff observed that Anat Cohen “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.”

With her touring quartet – keyboardist Jason Lindner, bassist Tal Mashiach, drummer Daniel Freedman – she demonstrated this year on Luminosa, her seventh album, why DownBeat would call her “a woodwind revelation of dark tones and delicious lyricism, but also a dynamic bandleader.”

The Tel Aviv-born US transplant began clarinet studies at 12, also plays tenor saxophone, and studied at Berklee College. In New York, she joined Brazilian ensembles like Duduka Da Fonseca’s Samba Jazz Quintet, and performed the music of Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Sidney Bechet, and their pan-American contemporaries. Her reputation spread as one of the most engaging of modern jazz musicians, and one of a group of Israelis spicing the New York scene.

Recognized with nine consecutive Jazz Journalists Association awards for clarinetist of the year and multiple DownBeatcritics and readers polls honors, she achieves a rare accomplishment in jazz: seamlessly merging early and recent styles, and geographically diverse forms, into personal expression.

Co-presented with Cornish Presents.