Anat Cohen, Pharaoh Sanders, Christian McBride: a jazz convergence

Jazz is bursting out all over this week in the Seattle area. Anat Cohen, hands down the best clarinetist in jazz, appears with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra and Christian McBride and Pharoah Sanders each play at Jazz Alley.

By Paul de Barros
Seattle Times jazz critic

Three exceptionally strong jazz acts hit Seattle this week — clarinetist/saxophonist Anat Cohen, performing with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra (SRJO); veteran saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, with an all-star band that includes drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts, guitarist Stanley Jordan and bassist Charnett Moffett; and bassist Christian McBride’s trio.

Cohen, who hails originally from Israel, has in the last few years become, hands down, the ascendant clarinetist in jazz.

Not just her beautiful, soulful sound but her architectural sense of a solo and exuberant sense of rhythm make her one of the most absorbing players — on any instrument — in the music today.

“She’s just at the top of the heap these days,” agrees SRJO co-director Michael Brockman. “She’s such a fiery, spirited player. She’s clearly a composer on the clarinet.”

For her concerts with the orchestra — Saturday in Seattle, Sunday in Kirkland — Cohen sent arrangements of “Cry Me a River,” “La Comparsa,” “Ingênuo,” and Johnny Griffin’s “Do It,” all written by her friend Oded Lev-Ari.

She will also perform her intriguing version of Fats Waller’s bubbly “Jitterbug Waltz,” written in 9/8 time and including a mind-blowing, contrary bass line.

SRJO members will contribute charts for the show, including trombonist Dave Marriott’s take on Abdullah Ibrahim’s “The Wedding” and Brockman’s own arrangement of Lonnie Smith’s “And the World Weeps,” both of which Cohen has recorded on her own. Seattle pianist Jovino Santos Neto contributes his arrangements of Hermeto Pascoal’s “Bebê” and “Doce de Coco.”

Cohen is a profoundly multicultural player, who draws on Middle Eastern and Latin styles. Brockman sees that breadth as important for the SRJO, which has until now concentrated on the mainstream tradition.

As the Village Vanguard Turns 80, It Remains New York's Most Cherished Jazz Club

"It's really the only quote unquote holy place left in jazz – period.

By Matthew Kassel
New York Observer

On any given night, one can descend the flight of creaky steps that lead down to the dark basement club of the Village Vanguard, whose green felt walls and other decorative trappings have remained unchanged for decades, and feel at once deeply connected to the city and completely removed from it.

It has been called the “Camelot of jazz rooms,” the “Carnegie Hall of Cool” and the “prototypical Village bohemian club,” but regardless of analogies, the Vanguard is simply one of those hallowed New York institutions—like the Grand Central Oyster Bar or, for that matter, Grand Central itself—that seems to have always existed.

This Sunday, the Vanguard, which is the oldest jazz club in the city, turns 80. To celebrate that occasion, the pianist Jason Moran is presenting a weeklong string of concerts, running March 10-15, that attest to the club’s rich history. There will be solo piano performances, poetry readings, comedy and an evening devoted to the music of Thelonious Monk, among other things.

“There’s no other place on the planet where so many greats played for so many years, and that’s one of those statements that seems like hyperbole, but it’s not,” said Loren Schoenberg, the artistic director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. “It’s really the only quote unquote holy place left in jazz—period.”

The Vanguard, the Zelig of New York nightclubs, has borne witness to some of the greatest performers in the history of American entertainment. Opened in 1935 by Max Gordon, a Lithuanian immigrant and impresario, it originally operated in the tradition of a Viennese cabaret and poetry house, featuring the likes of Maxwell Bodenheim and Joe Gould, described by Vanity Fair as “notorious bohemian poet-alcoholics.”

Those who have never been can look forward not only to its authentic feel but also its distinct, wedge-shaped room—and its acoustics, which musicians and listeners in the know say can’t be beat. The clarinetist Anat Cohen, who has recorded a live album there, described the room’s sound as “eternal.”

“You have a week to get used to the sound, and every day it builds on what you did the first day, which really helps to develop a song,” Ms. Cohen said. “The songs take the shape of the room, and the sound of the instruments—it’s so natural, it makes the music just grow. You can let the music become what it wants to be.”