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jazz's skinny stepchild, the licorice stick

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Larry Kart Proficient

Larry Kart

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Pace Dan Morgenstern, one of her big fans, but Cohen's playing gives me a pain.

Why?

All I hear is lots of licks, no particular sense of line. Also,it seems to me that her time isn't that great at times, though this was more the case on tenor than on clarinet. In any case, what is there about her that you find striking musically? My impression is that if she were not for the human-interest factors of her being a woman and from Israel, Cohen would not have entered the public consciousness to this degree. Further, there's the fact that some of her early prominent NYC gigs came about because her boyfriend, Bill Gates' financial advisor, bankrolled them. Don't know to what if any extent that's still the case, but that certainly served to get the ball rolling.

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Larry Kart Proficient

Larry Kart

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If you want to hear some really fiery, creative "in the tradition" clarinet playing, check out Frenchman Alain Marquet with Sharkey & Co. in 1978:

Marquet in more recent times was no less excellent with Le Petit Jazz Band.

Also, though I can't recall her name right now, there is a youngish female trad clarinetist (American or European, I don't recall which) who could eat Cohen for lunch.

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Larry Kart Proficient

Larry Kart

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No matter how wonderfully done, these recreations give me the heebie jeebies big time. Kind of like fully functioning guns from 3-d copiers.

I know what you mean in general and agree, but Jean-Pierre Morel's Charquet & Co. (later Sharkey & Co.) and his Le Petit Jazz Band seem to me to be a different sort of phenomenon, just as Dave Dallwitz, Ade Monsborough and the other remarkable Australians were. The initial/sensibility orientation was "trad," but the results were something new. Dallwitz's "Ern Malley Suite," for one, was evidence of that.

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fasstrack Newbie

fasstrack

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Pace Dan Morgenstern, one of her big fans, but Cohen's playing gives me a pain.

Why? All I hear is lots of licks, no particular sense of line. In any case, what is there about her that you find striking musically?... Further, there's the fact that some of her early prominent NYC gigs came about because her boyfriend, Bill Gates' financial advisor, bankrolled..

I never said I found anything striking, just wondering what the bee in your bonnet was. I will say my first hearing of her was in the choro group mentioned in the article-an excellent group BTW, with CDs available. Choro is not improvised except in short vamp sections, and Ms. Cohen and the gtr/percussion ists made the most of these w/o flash. She got a good sound and seemed a good generic player. Haven't heard enough to forge an opinion...

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fasstrack Newbie

fasstrack

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Larry, I haven't heard enough to know her bona fides as a real improviser, but thought her an excellent all-around musician. Tenor playing didn't floor me either. As far as the social elements you broach influencing success they shouldn't be disqualifers if she got game. And as far as 'Daddy Longlegs'-hey, nice work if you can get it...

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Mark Stryker Collaborator

Mark Stryker

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Heard her a few times and thought she sounded significantly below average on tenor but much better on clarinet. It still wasn't to my taste but there was a more individual sound, conception and higher craft level there. She also sounded better in context of her own group/material than in more straight ahead jam session-like contexts, but again even her best was not particularly interesting to me. Having said that, however, she did have a way of connecting (musically and personality) with an audience that reminded me a little of certain other sometimes idiosyncratic or high-energy musicians that people respond to like Michel Camilo, Regina Carter, Paquito D'Rivera and others.

Coda 1: I thought the Times' story here was pretty awful in its almost complete lack of context of who and what has happened with the clarinet in the last 40 years. Not that a profile needs to slip into an egghead treatise, but one or two solid paragraphs placed higher in the story that swept through John Carter, Eddie Daniels, Buddy DeFranco, etc. (Byron and Peplowski were at least name checked but barely) and mentioned the instrument's role viz avant-garde would have helped dampen the sense that she's a one-person show rescuing the instrument from oblivion. Would have been possible to do this in a few sentences....

Coda 2: As far as fresh take on the old without the hats and nostalgia, I'll take these guys from Campaign in '75. Chicagoan Ron Dewar is the clarinetist.

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Larry Kart Proficient

Larry Kart

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I have 2 Le Rois Du Fox Trot CDs on Stomp Off & like them

However, I don't see what they have to do with Anat Cohen.

I'm with Morgenstern (& myself) this time instead of you (Larry).

Yes, Morel's music and his soloists are working in an older tradition than Cohen is, but she is "in the tradition" by and large and also sounds to me like she's playing by the numbers and/or under glass, while Morel's reed soloists -- Alain Marquet, Marc Bresdin, and Michael Bescont -- are vividily in the present, emotionally and in terms of creating anew. Or so it seems to me.

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papsrus Newbie

papsrus

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it's funny, Larry, but I did notice in some youtube clip of hers that she's picked up some weird Tony Scott's phrasings; I know to you that's like fingernails on a blackboard. At any rate I posted a bit on Facebook about how dumb that article is.

Tried to find your post on this article on your FB page (I find that site annoying and frustrating to navigate) but only stumbled across a link to the article itself and a few comments by other folks.

I was ready to dismiss some of the pronouncements here as snobbish whistling, until I read the article. It was embarrassingly amateurish.

Apparently, the writer is one of the few people "familiar" with the NY jazz scene who hadn't heard of Cohen (and her brothers, who always merit mention in any article I've read about her). She has certainly been reviewed/profiled in the pages of the New York Times more than a few times, yet this writer blubbers on and on about this gem he's unearthed; this goddess whose music moved him to dig out his old, dusty clarinet (if only to fondle it, because actually trying to play a few scales would be sacrilege).

The article was bound to leave anyone who has even glancing familiarity with jazz clarinet rolling their eyes.

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