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.”
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.
